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NOV 16 1898 



ESSAYS 

IN 

Dramatic Criticism 

WITH 

IMPRESSIONS 

OF 

SOME MODERN PLAYS 



L. DUPONT SYLE 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 



NEW YORK 

WILLIAM R. JENKINS, 

851-853 Sixth Avenue. 



C^rWv '^^ 






Copyright, 1898. by L. DuPont Sylh. 



4-U Bights Reserved. 




PEINa^ED BY THE 

PEESS or WILLIAM R. JENKINS 

NEW YOKE 









TO 

Mrs. Phebp: A. Hearst 

whose thoughtful and loving generosity 

has made possible to so many 

the attainment of ideals 

this book is dedicated 

(by permission) 

as a mark of appreciation. 



All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good 

shall exist; 
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor 

good, 7ior power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives 

for the melodist 
When eternity affirms the conception of an 

hour. 
The high that proved too high, the heroic for 

earth too hard, 
The passiofi that left the ground to lose itself in 

the sky, 
Are music sent zip to God by the lover and the 

bard; 
Enough that He heard it once : we shall hear 

it by-and-by. 

— Browning. 



PREFACE. 



We are just beginning to have a drama 
in the United States : the Impressions 
recorded in the second part of this little 
book are an attempt to preserve material 
that may (or may^ not) be useful to the 
future historian of that drama. 

In the Essays of the first part, I have 
endeavored to deal with questions that 
have a more permanent interest than 
have those touched on in the Ivipressions. 

About two- thirds of the contents of 
this book has already appeared, in 
slightly different shape, in the columns 
of the San Fi'ancisco Exaininer. I have 
to thank the Management of that paper 
for permission to reprint here. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



I.-ESSAYS. 

Page. 
I. The Influence of Moliere Upon 

Sheridan and Congreve 3 

II. Is the Actor's Art Unworthy ? . . 48 

III. Some Essentials of the Actor's 

Art 58 

IV. The Endowed Theatre 65 

V. The Future of the Drama 84 

IL— IMPRESSIONS. 

I. Shall We Forgive Her? — The 

Serenade 91 

II. A Secret Warrant 103 

III. Robin Hood iii 

IV. The Geisha. — Rip Van Winkle 

(Opera).— A Gilded Fool ii6 

V. The Cat and the Cherub. — The 

First Born. — A Gay Deceiver.. 125 

VI. Shore Acres 135 

^11. Trilby. — The Purser 145 

III. Niobe.— In Old Japan 154 



I. 

ESSAYS. 



I. 

THE INFLUENCE OF MOUERK 

UPON CONGREVE AND 

SHERIDAN. 



If one could acquit Charles I. of the 
cardinal crime of being a liar, there are 
many aspects of his character that might 
be dwelt upon with pleasure. Not the 
least pleasing among these, is his patron- 
age of the Fine Arts; to Vandyck he gave 
free apartments in Blackfriars Palace, a 
pension of ^200 a year, knighthood and 
orders for numerous paintings,— some of 
which were paid for while others were 
not ; to Ben Jonson he not only continued 
the Laureateship, a hundred pounds a 
year and the tierce of Canary granted by 
James I., but he was also pleased publicly 
to indicate his interest in the drama by 
considerable grants of money for Masks, 
by allowing the Queen to appear in a 
pastoral comedy and by himself acting a 



4 . KSSAYS IN 

part in Jonsou's Mask oi Lovers Triumph 
Through Callipolis (produced in 1630). 

Such facts as these show palpably the 
intimate connection between the Court 
and the Theatre, — a connection which, 
while apparently advantageous to the 
drama, was, in reality, harmful to its 
life and growth : for it tended to make 
that drama a mere recreation for a small 
aristocratic class and to remove it from 
close contact with the sympathies of an 
immense majority of the people. Even 
before the death of Shakespeare the na- 
tional life had begun to assume forms 
which, in the eyes of the Couit, were 
strange, fantastic, contemptible. Yet 
these were the forms which in the end 
must and did prevail, — forms which re- 
presented, in spite of their outward ab- 
surdities, a strong, inner, spiritual life, 
the life of Puritanism. The dramatists, 
blinded by their devotion to the Court, 
were unable to perceive and to acknowl- 
edge the purity and virility of Puritan 
motives ; they recognized only the sur- 
face ridiculosities and lent their willing 
aid to expose and to deride what they 
considered the hypocrisy of a class to 
whom England owes Hampdon and Vane, 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 5 

Milton and Cromwell. When, therefore, 
king and parliament abandoned hard 
words for harder blows, the theatrical 
profession and all connected with it 
were relieved fi om the embarrassment of 
choosing a side : their side was chosen 
for them by the stern exigencies of the 
situation into which they had thrust 
themselves. Their cause was lost even 
before the king's : he was not executed 
until 1649 ; ten years before this, theatri- 
cal representations had all but ceased and 
the theatre was legally abolished by the 
parliamentary statute of 1642. This de- 
clared that "while these sad causes and 
set-times of humiliation do continue, 
stage plays shall cease and be forborne." 
For fourteen years there was hardly a 
dramatic performance in Kngland ; in 
1656 D'Avenant obtained permission to 
produce a kind of musical dialogue which 
he described as "after the manner of the 
Ancients." In 1657 he was allowed to 
give his Siege of Rhodes, which he was 
careful to designate not as a play, but as 
"a Representation by the Art of Pros- 
pective in Scenes, and the Story Sung in 
Recitative Music." This marks the be- 
ginning of the end of Puritan regime^ and 



6 ESSAYS IN 

with the restoration of Charles II. in 1660 
the theatres were immediately reopened. 
For the twenty years, then, from 1640 
to 1660, the acting drama had been prac- 
tically dead in England. When the cur- 
tain fell in the first-mentioned year, there 
were living not only many actors who 
had been trained in the school of Bur- 
bage, Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, but 
also some dramatists able to support not 
unworthily the traditions of the Eh"za- 
bethan stage. Among these were Web- 
ster, Thomas Heywood, Massinger, Field, 
John Ford and Shirley. When the cur- 
tain rose again in 1660, the only one left 
of this illustrious group was Shirley, and 
he, poor, old and broken by misfortune, 
never renewed his connection with the 
stage during the six years of life that 
were left to him. This fact, trifling as it 
may appear, seems to me significant of 
the complete break in the traditions of 
the English stage caused by those twenty 
years of Puritan ascendancy. Moreover, 
the nation, though it had restored the 
Stuarts as a political convenience, was 
still Puritan by a large majority, and the 
aversion from the stage which had crys- 
talized in the drastic ordinance of 1642, 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 7 

when bishops and actors were classed and 
abolished together,— this aversion was 
inherited as a tradition, not only by the 
children of the men who had humbled 
kings at Naseby and at Worcester, but 
also by their children's children unto the 
generations of to day. 

This, then, was the condition of affairs 
which confronted the would-be drama- 
tists of 1660: — a stage with hardly an 
actor, a broken tradition of great writers, 
a nation a majority of whose members 
regarded the stage as the invention of 
Beelzebub. Under these circumstances 
it is not surprising that the dramatic 
authors turned again for audience to that 
small and exclusive upper class which 
had formerly been their patrons, and that 
they sought models among the writers of 
that nation which had welcomed the 
king in his exile and had impressed upon 
him many traits properly characterized as 
French. While we have not here to deal 
specifically with tragedy, it may be no- 
ticed in passing that the influence of 
Corneille and Racine is no less clearly 
traceable in Dryden than is that of D'an- 
court in Vanbrugh and of Moliere in 
Wycherley and Congreve. 



8 KSSAYS IN 

Here now it may be proper to describe 
briefly the character and the environment 
of that Moliere comedy which from the 
time of that writer down to our own has 
had so vast an influence upon the comedy 
of every civilized nation. 

In the lylh century, the theatre of 
France, like that of England, was inti- 
mately connected with a Court upon 
whose favor and patronage it depended 
for its very existence. While the English 
people, through the stress and strife of 
civil war, were pushing forward to the 
goal of constitutional liberty, France, 
thanks to Richelieu and Mazarin, seemed 
not only to have lost sight of this goal, 
but to have forgotten that such a thing 
existed. While England gained in one 
direction, she lost in another : the Fine 
Arts languished and almost died. While 
France lost in one direction, she gained 
in another : the Fine Arts grew and 
flourished, — and conspicuous among 
these Arts was the drama. 

After twelve years of experience as 
author, manager and actor in the pro- 
vinces, Moliere was invited to Paris in 
1658 through the influence of the Prince 
de Couti and the Bishop of Valence. 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM () 

His compaii)^ was taken under the pat- 
ronage of Philip, Duke of xA.njou, younger 
brother of Louis XIV. For six j^ears 
Moliere grew steadily in the favor of 
the King, who, in 1664, stood sponsor 
to the poet's eldest son. The next year 
the troupe was distinguished by the title 
of The King's Comedians, and was 
granted an annual subvention of 7000 
livres ; nor in the eight years that were 
to elapse before his death (1673) did 
Moliere ever lose the friendship and 
patronage of the King. Without the 
royal protection some of his most famous 
works, notably Tarhiffe and Le Festin de 
Pierre, could never have been performed 
and would probably never have been 
written. Yet this patronage was far 
from being an unmitigated blessing. To 
please the callow taste of his royal mas- 
ter, Moliere was compelled to waste 
much of his time upon spectacles, ballets 
and farces quite unworthy of him, and 
whenever in his plays he touched upon 
questions of politics he was obliged to 
abandon the artistic attitude of satirist 
for the degrading posture of flatterer. 
A king became to him as a king 
to Beaumont and Fletcher, a thing to 



10 ESSAYS tN' 

be bowed down to and not to be 
criticised. 

But, royalty apart, the life of Paris 
furnished Moliere an extensive field 
wherein he might exercise his comic 
genius. If kings could not be sacrificed 
to the gaiety of nations, fops and mar- 
quises could. Hence the long gallery of 
exquisitely-painted fine gentlemen, con- 
spicuous among whom hang Dorante, the 
Marquis de Mascarille and the redoubt- 
able Viscount Jodelet. Fine ladies also 
are not wanting, — ladies who are witty 
and amiable like Bliante, witty and heart- 
less like Celimene. At the other end of 
the social scale we have as foils and 
critics to their superiors the downright, 
common-sense servant girl, as in Nicole, 
Dorine, Toinette, and by their side those 
schemers in petticoats, Frosine and 
Claudine. Nor is the middle class unre- 
presented. Monsieur Jourdain needs but 
mention to be recognized as a type of 
that snobbishness to be seen in every 
wealthy society ; while the miser, the 
rake, the hypocrite, the blue-stocking, 
have each a play. This enumeration, 
incomplete as it will be recognized to 
be, may serve to indicate the range of 



Dramatic criticism it 

Moliere's observation. His strength lies, 
it seems to me, in the depiction of this 
wide range of character by means of just 
and appropriate dialogue and by means 
of situations which, though often re- 
peated and seldom highly dramatic, are 
nevertheless sufficient for their end. 
While it cannot be denied that in some 
of his farces he is exceedingly coarse, in 
the great majority of his plays the moral 
tone is pure, noble and elevated. For 
surface polish he may owe something to 
the refined paganism which was the prac- 
tical creed of the Court of Louis XIV., 
but for the deeper ethical treatment which 
we find in his plays he must have been 
indebted to his own serious nature, — 
"this jester, thoughtful as an apostle," 
as Voltaire has called him. 

Moliere's work was completed thirteen 
years after the English Restoration. 
Some of the best of it, L'Acole des 
Femmes^ for instance, was in existence as 
early as 1662. With such a mass of 
splendid material to draw from, with a 
King and Court devoted to French litera- 
ture and French fashions, with a stage 
cleared of EJlizabethan traditions as above 



12 ESSAYS IN 

described, small wonder is it that the 
Restoration comedy writers helped them- 
selves bountifully from the banquet 
ajGforded by Moliere's table. Small won- 
der is it also, if, lacking the fine dis- 
criminating taste of the master of the 
feast, they mingled courses which he had 
kept separate. Moreover, whenever they 
found the viands too delicate for their 
coarse palate, they did not hesitate to 
season them with ill-flavored and unsav- 
ory condiments mixed to suit their 
English audiences. This process they 
often refer to as '' strengthening ' ' Moliere. 
To us it seems rather a weakening and 
debasing of that great writer's materials. 
Chief among these dramatic criminals 
stands Wycherley, who evidently influ- 
enced Congreve's early work and who 
himself shows unmistakable traces of the 
influence of Moliere. Wycherley 's The 
Country Wife (written about 1672), takes 
its main incidents from two plays of 
Moliere's, L^J^cole des Fem7ne5 2in6 L'Ecole 
des Maris. So ingenious is the plot, so 
diverting are the incidents of the French 
author's works, that not even the be- 
smirching hand of Wycherley has render- 
ed it impossible to read with interest his 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM I3 

English version. The extraordinary- 
vitality of the Moliere elements is shown 
by the fact that they still survive in a 
play recently given by Mr. Daly's com- 
pany, — The Cozcntry Girl. 

Wycherley's Plain Dealer (1674), is a 
debased and vulgarized version of 
Moliere' s Le Misayithrope, showing cor- 
respondencies in plot and characters as 
follows : — 

Plot. The plot in each play turns upon 
the misfortunes and humiliations which 
befall a man sincere and outspoken, 
placed in a highly artificial and conven- 
tionalized society. In each case this man 
distrusts and rails at everybody in the 
world save two, — himself and the woman 
he loves In both plays the interest 
culminates in the scene where the Mis- 
anthrope or the Plain Dealer finds that 
his mistress is false as the rest of her 
world. In the sub-plot, Moliere relieves 
this somewhat dark picture with light 
and delicate touches of healthy sentiment 
and of pure affection, wherein the tone of 
high comedy and an organic connection 
with the main plot are perfectly preserved. 
In Wycherley, the sub-plot is low comedy 
and has no more connection with the 



14 ESSAYS IN 

main- plot than have negro dialect stories 
with literature. 

Characters. The Alceste of Moli^re, a 
man of high temper and of high character, 
incapable of an unworth}^ deed, appears 
in the Manly of Wycherley as a surly, 
foul-mouthed v/retch capable of actions 
at which an lago would have shuddered. 
Philante, the polished and sensible man 
of the world, appears as Freeman, whose 
highest ambition is to mend a broken 
fortune by a doubtful marriage ; Oronte, 
that deliciously absurd coxcomb, is trans- 
formed to the traitor Vernish, aptly 
described by Manly as a man of such 
extraordinary merit in villainy that the 
world and fortune can never desert him ; 
Kliante, cousin to Celimene, appears as 
Kliza, cousin to Olivia ; the scandal- 
mongering Marquises appear as Novel 
and Lord Plausible ; and lastly, Celi- 
mene, whose faults are such as may 
easily be forgiven to her age and sex, 
appears as that Olivia whose character 
may be fitly described by Congreve's 
couplet — 

" Heaven has no rage like love to hatred 

turned, 
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned." 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 15 

The further indebtedness of Wycherley 
to Moliere may be traced in the con- 
versation between Manly and Freeman 
(Plain Dealer, I., j), in the scandal- 
mongering scene of Act II., where Olivia, 
like Celimene, leads and outrails the 
railers, and in the incident of the two 
letters sent by the heroine to her two 
foppish admirers. To another play of 
Moliere's, the Critique de V ^cole des 
Feinmes, Wycherley is indebted for that 
effective scene in the Plain Dealer where 
he criticises his own play, the Country 
Wife. 

I have given this somewhat detailed 
study of Wycherley 's borrowings from 
Moliere, as they may serve as a type of 
the adaptations made by many other Et]g- 
lish dramatists during the Restoration 
period. Among those who helped them- 
selves freely and too often in Wycherley 's 
manner may be mentioned Dry den, 
Vanbrugh, Shadwell, D'Avenant, Sed- 
ley, Ravenscroft, Crowne, Betterton, 
Otway, Mrs. Behn. Most of these writers 
preceded Congreve, and it is natural that 
in his first play he should have followed 
the fashion thus set and that he should 
have imitated particularly the most pro- 



1 6 KSSAYS IN 

iniuent comedy writer among those just 
named, — Wycherley. Every young 
writer is greatly affected by the literary 
tone or school popular at the beginning 
of his career ; coarse dialogue and risque 
situations were all the fashion when Con- 
greve began to v/rite, and this may serve 
to account for and to palliate the presence 
of these elements in his earlier work. 

Congreve's first play, The Old Bachelor , 
takes its name and its principal character 
from the type set upon the stage by 
Moliere in his Misafithrope and by 
Wycherley in his Plain Dealer. Hartwell 
approaches nearer to his French proto- 
type than does Manly : he is a man of 
good heart and a gentleman, — the only 
one in the play. He has more wit than 
Alceste and more refinement than Manly. 
Like Alceste, the misfortunes which be- 
fall him come from his trusting too well 
the woman he loves ; he has the sym- 
pathy of the audience, as has Alceste and 
as Manly has not. When his difficulties 
are straightened out Vv^e rejoice with him 
that he is allowed to remain what God 
and nature had evidently intended him 
to be, — an old bachelor. In Congreve, 
then, writing at the age of 22, we see 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 1 7 

a finer art than in those comedy writers 
who were his immediate predecessors and 
his contemporaries, for in them, with 
rare exceptions, every character is painted 
black and every side of human nature is 
equally despic^ible, — a mistaken method 
of portrayal of which Moliere in his 
comedies is never guilt5^ The other 
characters in The Old Bachelor are of 
narrow range and of purely conventional 
types, drawn rather from a young man's 
study of books than from observation 
of actual life. It may be worth while to 
notice in passing that the traditional 
animus of the dramatists against the 
Puritans comes out strongly in the types 
of that class introduced into the play, — 
Fondlewife and the spurious Spintext. 
Three times in this piny Congreve em- 
ploys that weakest of diamatic devices, 
the Soliloquy. This is a marked feature 
of Moliere's early style, noticeably in 
L'^iojirdi and in Le Depit Afnoureux. 
Moliere himself, so far as I know, never 
took the trouble to defend the Soliloquy; 
Congreve has seen its weakness and has 
made as good a defense for it as has ever 
been printed. In the preface to his next 
play, The Double Dealer ^ he writes : — "I 



1 8 :essAYS m 

grant that for a man to talk to liiaiself 
appears absurd and unnatural, and in- 
deed it is so in most cases ; but the 
circumstances which may attend the 
occasion make great alteration. It often- 
times happens to a man to have designs 
which require him to himself \_szc] and 
in their nature cannot admit of a con- 
fidant. Such for certain is all villainy, 
and other less mischievous intentions 
may be very improper to be communi- 
cated to a second person. In such a case, 
therefore, the audience must observe 
whether the person upon the stage takes 
any notice of them at all or no. For if he 
supposes anyone to be by when he talks 
to himself, it is monstrous and ridiculous 
to the last degree. Nay, not only in this 
case, but in any part of a play, if there 
is expressed any knowledge of an audi- 
ence, it is insufferable. But otherwise, 
when a man in soliloquy reasons with 
himself, and pro's and co?z's, and 
weighs all his designs, we ought not 
to imagine that this man either talks to 
us or to himself ; he is only thinking, 
and thinking such matters as were in- 
excusable folly in him to speak. But 
because we are concealed spectators of 



DRAMATIC CRiTlCIvSM I9 

the plot in agitation, and the poet finds 
it necessary to let us know the whole 
mystery of his contrivance, he is willing 
to inform us of this person's thoughts ; 
and to that end is forced to make use 
of the expedient of speech, no other 
better way being yet invented for the 
communication of thought." 

In The Double Dealer, written some 
two years after The Old Bachelor, Con- 
greve is still in the imitative stage. In 
this play the general design is modeled 
upon that of Moliere's Tariuffe, and, 
like that work, its artistic unity is in- 
jured by the violent introduction of an 
illogical element, forced in to save what 
was intended to be a comedy from turn- 
ing out a tragedy. For the logical out- 
come of the Tarhiffe is truly tragical, not 
comical. Orgon's infatuation with Tar- 
tuffe, his incapacity for seeing through 
the character of the impostor, his folly 
in putting himself so thoroughly into the 
power of that impostor, — all this should 
consistently result in the ruin of the good 
man, in the triumph of the bad. Nothing 
could prevent this but the forced and 
inartistic introduction of the King's 
officer with his sycophantic praise of 



20 ESSAYS IN 

his monarch's great discernment and lofty 
soul. Similarly in The Double Dealer, 
the folly of Lord Touchwood and of 
Mellefonte in trusting Mask well in spite 
of plain proofs of his insincerity, should 
have logically resulted in the triumph 
of villainy. This result is avoided only 
by making the villain leave unguarded 
so wide a gap in the fence of his deceit 
that not even so trusting a fool as 
Mellefonte could help noticing it. This 
serious defect was so apparent at the 
early representations, that the play was 
practically a failure in spite of its brilliant 
wit and the genuine comedy of some 
of its scenes 

Coming now to detailed resemblances 
between The Do2Lble Dealer and works of 
Moliere, we notice that the character of 
Lady Froth, the best comedy character 
in the play, described by Congreve in 
his play bill as " a great coquette, pre- 
tender to poetry, wit and learning," — this 
delightful bluestocking who babbles of 
"Racine and Dacier upon Aristotle," 
is a compound of the two sisters in Les 
Precieuses Ridicules, — Cathos, who con- 
sidered extempore verses . . . "the 
very touchstone of genius," and Madelon, 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 21 

whose special talent consisted in turning 
the whole Roman history into madrigals. 
Scene lo of Act I. of Les Precieiises 
Ridicules, where Mascarille reads his 
verses to the ladies, and the second scene 
of Act I. oi Le Misanthrope, where Oronte 
demands that Alceste should criticise his 
sonnet, — these are the prototypes of the 
tenth scene of Act III. of The Double 
Dealer, where Lady Froth receives the 
admiration of Mr. Brisk for her poem of 
"The Coachman in the Dair3^" I give 
this episode entire, as it is in Congreve's 
best style and may challenge comparison 
with the original. 

Lady Froth. Then you think that episode 
between Susan, the dairymaid, and our coach- 
man is not amiss; you know I may suppose the 
dairy in town as well as in the country. 

Brisk. Incomparable, let me perish ! But 
then, being an heroic poem, had not you better 
call him a charioteer ? Charioteer sounds great; 
besides, your ladyship's coachman having a 
red face, and you comparing him to the sun ; 
and you know the sun is called Heaven's 
charioteer. 

Lady F. Oh, ir. finitely better! I am ex- 
tremely beholden to you for the hint ; stay, 
we'll read over those half a score lines again. 
[Pulls out a paper.] Let me see here, you 



22 KSSAYS IN 

know what goes before, — the comparison, you 
know. [Reads] 

For as the sun shines every day 
So of our coachman I may say 

B. I'm afraid that simile won't do in wet 
weather; because you say the sun shines every 
day. 

Lady F. No, for the sun it won't, but it will 
do for the coachman: for you know there's 
most occasion for a coach in wet weather. 

B. Right, right, that saves all. 

Lady F. Then, I don't say the sun shines all 
the day, but that he peeps now and then; yet 
he does shine all the day too, you know, 
though we don't see him. 

B. Right ; but the vulgar will never com- 
prehend that. 

Lady F. Well, you shall hear. Let me see. 
[Reads] 

For as the sun shines every day, 

So, of our coachman I may say, 

He shows his drunken, fiery face. 

Just as the sun does, more or less^ 

B. That's right, all's well, all's well !— 
"more or less." 
Lady F. [Reads] 

And when at night his labour's done. 
Then, too, like Heaven's charioteer the sun- 
Ay, charioteer does better. 

Into the dairy he descends, 
And there his whipping and his driving ends; 
There he's secure from danger of a bilk, 
His fare is paid him, and he sets in milk. 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 23 

For Susan, you know, is Thetis, and so 

B, Incomparably well and proper, egad / 
But I have one exception to make : don't you 
think bilk — (I know it's good rhyme) — but 
don't you think "bilk" and "fare" too like a 
hackney coachman? 

Lady F. I swear and vow, I am afraid so. 
And yet our Jehu was a hackney coachman 
when my lord took him. 

B. Was he ? I'm answered if Jehu was a 
hackney coachman. You may put that in the 
marginal notes though, to prevent criticism. 
Only mark it with a small asterism, and 
say, "Jehu was formerly a hackney coach 
man." 

Lady F. I will; you'd oblige me extremely 
to write notes to the whole poem. 

B. With all my heart and soul, and proud 
of the vast honor, let me perish ! 

The same scene contains a fire of 
scandal-mongering epigrams lighted by 
the torches which wave so merrily in the 
hands of Celimene, Clitandre and Acaste 
as they march through the 5th scene 
of the 2nd Act of Le Misanthrope. It may 
be worth while to notice in passing that 
the concluding couplet of the 3rd Act of 
The Dotible Dealer is nothing but a rimed 
expression of the thought contained in 
Swift's famous definition of happiness,— 



24 ESSAYS IN 

" the perpetual possession of being well 
deceived." 

The Double Dealer is the last of Con- 
greve's plays that shows strong detailed 
resemblances to specific works of Moliere. 
In this play Congreve is still in the 
imitative stage : his characters, though 
witty, are seldom other than conventional 
and are often not clearly distinguished. 
Sir Paul Pliant and Lord Froth are prac- 
tically one and the same : Mr. Brisk and 
Mr. Careless could speak each other's 
speeches with entire dramatic propriety : 
Cynthia and Mellefonte are excellent 
young people, but hardly anything more. 
The pernicious habit of long soliloquies, 
imitated from Moliere and noticeable in 
The Old Bachelor, is carried to even 
greater lengths in The Double Dealer. 
But when we remember that when Con- 
greve wrote this play he was only 23, 
our wonder is not that the defects are so 
many, but that they are so few. 

Though of far more intrinsic interest, 
Congreve' s third and fifth plays, Love 
for Love and The Way of the World, 
cannot long detain us here : their very 
originality excludes all but a small por- 
tion of them from the field marked off by 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 2$ 

the limitations of our subject. In char- 
acters they owe nothing to Moliere save 
the types of gossipy, malicious fine ladies 
and gentlemen, — Mrs. Frail, Scandal and 
Tattle, in Love for Love ; Witwoud and 
Millamant, in The Way of the World. 
In general structure we still see the in- 
fluence of Moliere's style: the action is 
completed within a few hours: the scenes, 
ordinary and realistic interiors such as a 
drawing-room or a coffee-house, are sel- 
dom changed. Turning from resem- 
blances to contrasts, we notice that in the 
principal characters of these two great 
plays, Congreve is as thoroughly English 
as Moliere is French. Foresight, Sir 
Sampson Legend, Ben Legend, Sir Wil- 
fuU Witwoud, Lady Wishfort, are all of 
true British grain ; while the teasing per- 
plexities of the Congreve plots carry us 
far from that simplicity of construction 
characteristic of Moliere. In ethical tone 
and in artistic diction, Congreve, it must 
be confessed, suffers by comparison with 
Moliere. This is due, partly, to the 
lighter and more superficial nature of the 
Englishman, partly to the bad English 
models which set the fashion for him, and 
partly to his youth when he wrote. 



26 KSSAYS IN 

Congreve's last and greatest play was 
written when he was but thirty. At that 
age Moliere had written nothing but 
a few farces imitated from the Italian. 
All the deep experiences of life recorded 
in his great comedies were yet to come to 
him : when they came they fell upon 
a mind tried in the school of adversity, 
thoughtful, mature, refined. Many like 
experiences may have come to Congreve 
in the 28 years that followed his master- 
piece and in which he wrote almost 
notbiDg ; if they did come, they fell upon 
barren soil : unwatered by the dew of 
emotion, they withered and died. Yet in 
some obscure corner of Congreve' s hard 
and cynical heart there must have been 
one soft and tender spot, for into the 
mouth of a Mrs. Marwood he has put one 
divine phrase: " Srsy what you will, 'tis 
belter to be left th:^r nev^ r to h^ve b?en 
loved '' — a seiJtim : '- v.. : i-. ii , h-^ rdly bt-tter 
e^T>resH-:d reapp- -r^ in Tennyson's 
fam>ufr, 

'• 'Ti^- b vner tc^ have loved and lost, 
Tiian never to have loved at all." 

This brief study of Congreve may fitly 

close with a judgment upon him delivered 

by a celebrated Frenchman, — no less a 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 27 

man than Voltaire. In his Lettres sur 
les Ayiglais he writes: '*Mr. Congreve 
raised the glory of comedy to a greater 
height than any English writer before or 
since his time. He wrote only a few 
plays, but they are excellent in their 
kind. The laws of the drama are strictly 
observed in them. They abound with 
characters, all which are shadowed with 
the utmost delicacy, and we do not meet 
with so much as one low or coarse jest. (!) 
The language is everywhere that of men 
of fashion, but their actions are those of 
knaves, a proof that he was perfectly well 
acquainted with human nature and fre- 
quented what we call polite company." 

From The Way of the World in 1700 to 
The School for Scandal in 1777 is a long 
step, yet this distance must be traveled 
before we can meet an English comedy 
writer with wit enough to erect upon the 
foundations of Moliere a superstructure 
after the fashion of Congreve. During 
this long period, while there had arisen 
no great writer to carry on the Congreve 
tradition, the art of play-writing (of 
putting together what the French call 
the ** well-made piece ")-— this had been 



28 ESSAYS IN 

practised by a succession of clever men, 
Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Gibber, Gay, 
Hoadley, Coleman, Garrick, and bad 
resulted in a decided improvement in 
what may be called the mechanics of 
construction. The advantage which 
Sheridan thus inherited has been de- 
scribed by Taine ("History of English 
lyiterature," Book III., Chap. I., Sec- 
tion lo) : "The farce-writer of to-day 
sees that the catastrophe of half of 
Moliere's plays is ridiculous ; nay, many 
of them can produce effects better than 
Moliere ; in the long run they succeed in 
stripping the theatre of all awkwardness 
and circumlocution. A piquant style, 
and perfect machinery; pungency in all 
the words and animation in all the scenes; 
a superabundance of wit and marvels of 
ingenuity; over all this, a true physical 
activity and the secret pleasure of de- 
picting and justifying oneself, of public 
self-glorification : here is the foundation 
of the School for Scandal^ here the source 
of the talent and the success of 
Sheridan." 

Many sources have been suggested 
whence Sheridan may have drawn his 
School for Sca7idal, yet after all has been 



Dramatic criticism 29 

said it is difficult to believe that he is 
much indebted to any authors save 
Moliere and the Restoration comedy 
writers who copied him. The first indi- 
cation of this is in the title of the play, 
modeled upon the School for Wives and 
the School for Husbands of Moliere. This 
conception of the scandalous college (after 
Le Misanthrope) seems to have been the 
nucleus of the play, and the manuscript 
draft of the scandal-mongering conversa- 
tion shows a brutal coarseness of wit, 
suggesting a close study of Wycherley 
and Farquhar. Through repeated re- 
visions this coarseness was gradually 
polished away until it resulted in the 
present version: even this is somewhat 
broader than 19th century ears are 
accustomed to, and suffers by comparison 
with the tone of good taste preserved in 
the corresponding scenes of Le Misayi- 
thrope. This will be illustrated by an 
extract further on: let it suffice now to 
recall attention to the title of the play 
and to the prominence assigned to I,ady 
Sneerwell and Mrs. Candor in the open- 
ing scene as indications of the probability 
that Sheridan's original intention was to 
write a comedy satirizing those fashion- 



30 ESSAYS IN 

able lovers of scandal whom he had often 
listened to at Bath and whose prototypes 
he found already done to the life in 
Moliere and in Congreve. But this he 
must have found too thin a thread upon 
which to hang a five-act play, and he 
accordingly twisted in with it another 
strand, — the story of the Teazles and of 
the two brothers Surface. The character 
of Sir Peter Teazle, originally intended 
to be merely a vulgar city merchant, was 
gradually sublimated and assimilated to 
that of his prototype Alceste in Le 
Misa7ithrope : when the outline is com- 
pleted we find him placed outside the 
envenomed circle of gossips, as was 
Alceste, and voicing, as did he, the 
comment and the rebuke of the just- 
minded spectator. Sir Peter has the 
violence of Sir Sampson I^egend without 
his vindictiveness ; he has all the honesty 
of Alceste without his moroseness. In 
the character and actions of Joseph Sur- 
face, Sheridan has again drawn heavily 
upon Moliere, — this time upon Tartuflfe. 
Both Joseph and Tartuflfe rise by hypo- 
crisy; the object at which they aim is 
the same, and whoever will compare the 
arguments addressed by Tartuflfe to 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 3 1 

Elraire {Tartu^e^ IV., 5), with those ad- 
dressed by Joseph Surface to Lady- 
Teazle {School for Scandal, IV., 3), will 
see that Sheridan's treatment of this 
delicate situation is directly based upon 
Moliere's. In the management of his 
denouement, in the working up of the 
wonderfully effective climax wherein the 
hypocrite is unmasked, Sheridan, it seems 
to me, has surpassed not only Moliere, 
who is here confessedly weak, but also 
Congreve, who, in the 5th Act of the 
Double Dealer, evidently saw that a 
strong situation was here demanded, 
but was as evidently unable to bring it 
about. 

In conclusion, I shall present the treat- 
ment of the same theme by each of the 
authors under consideration. This theme 
shall be that which gives its title to 
Sheridan's play, — the representation of 
that careless, easy, malicious conversa- 
tion which serves as the small change of 
fashionable society. In Moliere the scene 
selected is the 5th of the 2nd Act of Le 
Misanthrope : the principal characters are 
Celimene, the fine lady; Alce^te, her 
honest and plain-speaking lover; Acaste 
and Clitandre, Marquises. 



32 KSSAYS IN 

Git. Egad! madam, I have just come from 
the Louvre, where Cl^onte, at the levee, made 
himself supremely ridiculous. Has he no 
friend who could give him some charitable 
advice on his behaviour? 

Cell. It is true that he sadly compromises his 
reputation ; his manners everywhere at once 
strike us as odd ; and when after a short 
absence we see him again, he seems even more 
absurd than before. 

Aca. 'Gad ! talking of absurd people, I have 
just bad to bear with that most trying of tedious 
bores, the arguer Damon ; if you will believe 
me, he kept me out of my sedan-chair in the 
broihng sun for a whole hour. 

Cell. He certainly is a strange talker, and 
knows how to make long speeches with no 
meaning in them. No one understands a word 
of what he says ; and in all that we hear, there 
is nothing but noise. 

Eli. (to Philinte). This is no bad beginning, 
and the conversation is in a fair way against our 
neighbors. 

cut. Timante, madam, is another original. 

Celi. He is a man all mystery from head to 
foot. In passing he casts upon one a bewilder- 
ed glance, and with nothing to do is always 
busy. Grimaces abound in whatever he says, 
and he wearies one to death with his cere- 
monies. In the midst of a general conversation 
he has always some secret to whisper, and that 
secret turns out to be nothing. He makes a 
wonder of the merest trifle, and even wishes 
you "Good morning" mysteriously in your ear. 



DRAMA'KC CRITICISM 33 

Aca. And Gerald, madam? 

cm. Oh ! the tedious boaster ! You never 
see him come down from his noble pedestal. 
He is always mixing in the best society, and 
never quotes anyone less than duke, prince, or 
princess. Rank has turned his head, and all 
his talk is of horses, carriages and dogs. He 
" thou's " people of the highest position, and 
the word "sir" is with him quite obsolete. 

Oil. It is said that he is on the best terms 
with B^lise. 

Celi. Ah ! the poor creature ; and what dull 
company she is ! I suffer martyrdom when she 
comes to see me. In vain do I tax my powers 
to the utmost, to find out what to say to her; 
the barrenness of her talk destroys every 
attempt at conversation. It is useless to have 
recourse to the most commonplace topics to 
overcome her stupid silence ; the fine weather, 
the rain, the cold, and the heat are soon ex- 
hausted. Yet her visits, in themselves so un- 
welcome, drag their weary length along, and 
you may consult the clock and yawn twenty 
times, but she stirs no more than a log of wood. 

Aca. And what do you think of Adraste? 

cm. Ah ! what intolerable pride ! He is a 
man puffed up with conceit, always dissatisfied 
with the Court, and making it his business 
daily to inveigh against it. There is neither 
office, place nor living given away without 
some injustice having been done to the import- 
ant personage he fancies himself to be. 

cut. But young Cleon, who is visited by the 
best society, what do you say of him 1 



CSli. That his cook has all the merit, and 
that it is to his table that each one pays 
respect. 

EH. He takes care to provide the most 
dainty dishes. 

Cell. Yes, but I wish he would not provide 
himself; and I consider his stupid person a 
most unpleasant dish, which, to my mindi 
spoils the taste of all the others. 

Phil. His uncle, Damis, is greatly esteemed: 
what do you say of him, madam? 

cm. He is one of my friends. 

Phil. He is a gentleman, and has plenty of 
good sense. 

cm. Yes ; only the display of cleverness he 
makes vexes me beyond measure. He is 
always stiff and formal, and in all he says you 
can feel the effort he is making to utter some 
witticism. Since he has taken it into his head 
to think himself clever, he is so exacting that 
nothing can please his taste. He tries to see 
defects in all that is written ; thinks that to 
bestow praise is not worthy of a man of intelli- 
gence ; that it is a sign of knowledge to find 
fault with everything, the part of fools to 
admire and to laugh ; and that in never ap- 
proving the writings of our time he shows his 
superiority to other people. He even finds 
fault with ordinary conversations, and will not 
condescend to utter common things ; but, his 
arms crossed on his breast, looks down with 
contempt from the height of his intellect on all 
that is said. 
Aca. Demmit, madam, his very picture ! 



r):RAMAl^IC CRITICISM 35 

cut. Your skill in drawing character is ad- 
mirable, madam. 

Ale. Go on, go on, my dear courtly friends; 
no one is spared, and each will have his turn; 
yet, let any one of those people now appear, 
and we shall see you rush in haste to meet him, 
offer your hand, and with a flattering embrace 
protest you are his sincere friend. 

cut. Why do you call us to account? If 
you object to what is said, you had better ad- 
dress your reproaches to this lady. 

Ale. No, upon my soul, no ! It is you who 
deserve the blame ; your fawning smiles draw 
from her these slanderous descriptions ; her 
satirical turn of mind is constantly encouraged 
by the criminal incense of your flattery. She 
would find raillery less to her taste if she knew 
that it is not approved of. Thus it is that 
flatterers are always responsible for the vices 
spread among mankind. 

Phil. But why show such deep interest for 
those people ? You would be the first to con- 
demn in them the defects we find fault with. 

Celt. But must not our friend always show 
opposition? You surely would not have him 
think like everybody else, and must he not 
display everywhere the spirit of contradiction 
with which Heaven has blessed him? What 
others think never satisfies him ; he is always of 
the opposite opinion, and he would fear to pass 
for a vulgar-minded man if he were observed 
to agree with anyone. The privilege of con- 
tradicting has such charms for him, that he is 
often in arms against himself; and to hear his 



36 ESSAYS m 

own thoughts expressed by others is sufficient 
to make him oppose them. 

Here we notice that the method of 
presentation is very simple and not par- 
ticularly dramatic ; while it is true that 
the interest is centred on the heroine by 
giving her all the long character sketches 
to declaim, there is no clash of mind 
against mind, no repartee, no conflict of 
character with character until Alceste 
breaks in near the close of the scene. 



Congreve's method is very difierent in 
detail, as witness the following from the 
2nd scene of the 2nd Act of The Way of 
the World. Here the principal characters 
are Millamant, the fine lady; Mirabell, her 
lover, who grudges her society to every- 
one but himself; Witwoud, the would-be 
wit. 

[Enter Mrs. Millamant, Wltwoud and Mincing.'] 

Mir. Here she comes, i' faith, full sail, with 
her fan spread and her streamers out, and a 
shoal of fools for tenders ; ha, no, I cry her 
mercy ! 

Mrs. Fain. I see but one poor empty sculler, 
and he tows her woman after him. 

Mir. (to Mrs. Millamant). You seem to be 
unattended, madam— you used to have the 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 37 

beau monde throng after you; and a flock of 
gay fine perukes hovering round you. 

Wit. Like moths about a candle. I had 
like to have lost my comparison for want of 
breath. 

Blrs, Mil. O, I have denied myself airs to- 
day; I have walked as fast through the crowd — 

TT7/'. As a favourite just disgraced, and with 
as few followers. 

Mrs. MiL Dear Mr. Witwoud, truce with 
your similitudes ; for I'm as sick of 'em 

Wit. As a physician of a good air. I cannot 
help it, madam, though 'tis against myself. 

Mrs, Mil. Yet again ! Mincing, stand be- 
tween me and his wit. 

Wit. Do, Mrs. Mincing, like a screen before 
a great fire. I confess I do blaze to-day, — I am 
too bright. 

Mrs. Fain. But, dear Millamant, why were 
you so long? 

Mrs. MiL Long ! Lord, have I not made 
violent haste ? I have asked every living thing 
I met for you ; I have inquired after you, as 
after a new fashion. 

Wit, Madam, truce with your similitudes. 
No, you met her husband, and did not ask him 
for her. 

Mrs. MiL By your leave, Witwoud, that 
were like inquiring after an old fashion, to ask 
a husband for his wife. 

W^t. Hum, a hit ! a hit, a palpable hit ! I 
confess it. 

Mrs. Fain. You were dressed before I came 
abroad. 



3« ESSAYS IN 

Mrs. Mil. Ay, that's true. O, but then I had 
— Mincing, what had I ? Why was I so long ? 

Min. O, mem, your la'ship stayed to peruse 
a packet of letters. 

Mrs. Mil. O ay, letters— I had letters — I am 
persecuted with letters— I hate letters — nobody 
knows how to write letters, and yet one has 
'em, one does not know why. They serve one 
to pin up one's hair. 

Wit. Is that the way? Pray, madam, do 
you pin up your hair with all your letters? I 
find I must keep copies. 

Mrs. Mil. Only with those in verse, Mr. 
Witwoud. I never pin up my hair with prose. 
I think I tried once. Mincing. 

Min. O, mem, I shall never forget it. 

Mrs. Mil. Ay, poor Mincing tift and tift all 
the morning. 

Min. Till I had the cramp in my fingers, I'll 
vow, mem : and all to no purpose. But when 
your la'ship pins it up with poetry, it sits so 
pleasant the next day as anything, and is so 
pure and so crips. 

Wit, Indeed, so crips ? 

Min. You're such a critic, Mr. Witwoud. 

Mrs. Mil. Mirabell, did you take exceptions 
last night? O, ay, and went away. Now 
I think on't, I'm angry — no, now I think on't, 
I'm pleased, for I believe I gave you some pain. 

Mir. Does that please you ? 

Mrs. Mil. Infinitely ; I love to give pain. 

Mir. You would affect a cruelty which is 
not in your nature ; your true vanity is in the 
power of pleasing. 



MAUA'TiC CRrTlCiSM 3^ 

Mrs. Mil. Oh, I ask you pardon for that. 
One's cruelty is one's power ; and when one 
parts with one's cruelty, one parts with one's 
power; and when one has parted with that, 
I fancy one's old and ugly. 

Mir. Ay, ay, suffer your cruelty to ruin the 
object of your power, to destroy your lover, — 
and then how vain, how lost a thing you'll be ! 
Nay, 'tis true : you are no longer handsome 
when you've lost your lover; your beauty dies 
upon the instant; for beauty is the lover's gift; 
'tis he bestows your charms — your glass is all a 
cheat. The ugly and the old, whom the look- 
ing-glass mortifies, yet after commendation can 
be flattered by it, and discover beauties in it; for 
that reflects our praises, rather than your face. 

Mrs. Mil. O, the vanity of these men ! Fain- 
all, d'ye hear him? If they did not commend 
us, we were not handsome ! Now you must 
know they could not commend one if one was 
not handsome. Beauty the lover's gift ! Lord, 
what is a lover, that it can give ? Why, one 
makes lovers as fast as one pleases, and they 
live as long as one pleases, and they die as 
soon as one pleases ; and then, if one pleases, 
one makes more. 

Wit. Very pretty. Why, you make no more 
of making of lovers, madam, than of making so 
many card-matches. 

Mrs. Mil. One no more owes one's beauty 
to a lover, than one's wit to an echo. They 
can but reflect what we look and say; vain, 
empty things if we are silent or unseen, and 
want a being. 



40 :essAYS iisr 

Mir. Yet to those two vain, empty things 
you owe the two greatest pleasures of your life. 

Mrs. Mil. How so ? 

Mir. To your lover you owe the pleasure of 
hearing yourselves praised ; and to an echo the 
pleasure of hearing yourselves talk. 

Wit. But I know a lady that loves talking so 
incessantly, she won't give an echo fair play; 
she has that everlasting rotation of tongue, that 
an echo must wait till she dies before it can 
catch her last words. 

In this presentation the heroine is not 
only witty herself, but is also the cause 
of wit in others. Epigrams, repartee and 
similes follow each other fast and brilliant 
as shower of stars from exploding rocket. 
There is nothing serious, as in the tem- 
persome speeches of Moliere's hero ; all is 
lightness, gaiety, ease. The bon mots are 
distributed among the various characters 
with an evenness that amounts almost to 
balance. 

.1 ; , From Sheridan we take a part of the 
2nd sfeene of the 2nd Act of the School 
for Scandal: the college of gossips is 
holding a session in Lady Sneerwell's 
house, with that lady as the presiding 
genius. 

Mrs. Can. Now, I'll die ; but you are so 
scandalous, I'll forswear your society. 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 4 1 

LadyTeaz. What's the matter,Mrs. Candour? 

Mrs. Can. They'll not allow our friend JMiss 
Vermilion to be handsome. 

Lady Siieer. Oh, surely she is a pretty 
woman. 

Crab. I am very glad you think so, ma'am. 

Mrs. Can. She has a charming fresh colour. 

Lady Teaz. Yes, when it is fresh put on. 

Mrs. Ca7i. Oh, fie ! I'll swear her colour is 
natural : I have seen it come and go ! 

Lady Teaz. I dare swear you have, ma'am : 
it goes off at night, and comes again in the 
morning. 

Sir Ben. True, ma'am, it not only comes 
and goes ; but what's more, egad, her maid 
can fetch and carry it ! 

Mrs. Can. Ha ! ha ! ha ! how I hate to hear 
you talk so ! But surely, now, her sister is, or 
was, very handsome. 

Crab. Who ? Mrs. Evergreen ? O Lord ! 
she's six-and-fifty if she's an hour! 

Mrs. Can. Now positively you wrong her ; 
fifty-two or fifty-three is the utmost— and I 
don't think she looks more. 

Sir Ben. Ah ! there's no judging by her 
looks, unless one could see her face. 

Lady Sneer. Well, well, if Mrs. Evergreen 
does not take some pains to repair the ravages 
of time, you must allow she effects it with great 
ingenuity ; and surely that's better than the 
careless manner in which the widow Ochre 
caulks her wrinkles. 

Sir Ben, Nay, now. Lady Sneer well, you 
are severe upon the widow. Come, come, 'tis 



42 ESSAYS IN 

not that she paints so ill — but, when she has 
finished her face, she joins it on so badly to her 
neck, that she looks like a mended statue, in 
which the connoisseur may see at once 
that the head is modern, though the trunk's 
antique. 

Crab. Ha ! ha 1 ha ! Well said, nephew ! 

Mrs. Can. Ha ! ha! ha! Well, you make 
me laugh ; but I vow I hate you for it. What 
do you think of Miss Simper? 

Sir Ben. Why, she has very pretty teeth. 

Lady Teaz. Yes, and on that account, when 
she is neither speaking nor laughing (which 
very seldom happens), she never absolutely 
shuts her mouth, but leaves it always on ajar, 
as it were — thus. {Shows her teeth. 

Mrs. Can. How can you be so ill-natured ? 

Lady Teaz. Nay, I allow even that's better 
than the pains Mrs. Prim takes to conceal her 
losses in front. She draws her mouth till it 
positively resembles the aperture of a poor's- 
box, and all her words appear to sHde out 
edgewise as it were — thus : How do you do, 
tnadani ? Yes, madam. S^Mhnics. 

Lady Sneer. Very well. Lady Teazle ; I see 
you can be a little severe. 

Lady Teaz. In defence of a friend, it is but 
justice. But here comes Sir Peter to spoil our 
pleasantry. 

Enter Sir Peter Teazle. 

Sir Pet. Ladies, your most obedient. — 
\^Aside.'\ Mercy on me, here is the whole set ! 
a character dead at every word, I suppose. 

Mrs. Cafi. I am rejoiced you are come, Sir 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 43 

Peter. They have been so censorious — and 
Lady Teazle as bad as any one. 

Sir Pet. That must be very distressing to 
you, indeed, Mrs. Candour. 

Mrs Can. Oh, they will allow good qualities 
to nobody ; not even good nature to our friend 
Mrs. Pursy. 

Lady Teaz. What, the fat dowager who 
was at Mrs. Quadrille's last night ? 

Mrs. Can. Nay, her bulk is her misfortune ; 
and, when she takes so much pains to get rid of 
it, you ought not to reflect on her. 

Lady Sneer, That's very true, indeed. 

Lady Teaz. Yes, I know she almost lives 
on acids and small whey ; laces herself by 
pulleys ; and often, in the hottest noon in sum- 
mer, you may see her on a little squat pony, 
with her hair plaited up behind like a drummer's, 
and puffing round the Ring on a full trot. 

Mrs. Can. I thank you, Lady Teazle, for 
defending her. 

Sir Pet. Yes, a good defence truly. 

Mrs. Can. Truly, Lady Teazle is as censor- 
ious as Miss Sallow. 

Crab. Yes, and she is a curious being to 
pretend to be censorious— an awkward gawky, 
without any one good point under heaven. 

Mrs. Can. Positively you shall not be so 
very severe. Miss Sallow is a near relation of 
mine by marriage, and as for her person, great 
allowance is to be made ; for, let me tell you, 
a woman labours under many disadvantages 
who tries to pass for a girl of six-and-thirty. 

Lady Sneer, Though, surely, she is hand- 



44 KSSAYS IN 

some still — and for the weakness in her eyes, 
considering how much she reads by candlelight, 
it is not to be wondered at. 

Mrs. Ca7i. True, and then as to her manner; 
upon my word I think it is particularly graceful, 
considering she never had the least education ; 
for you know her mother was a Welsh milliner, 
and her father a sugar-baker at Bristol. 

Sir Ben. Ah ! you are both of you too good- 
natured ! 

Sir Pet. Yes, damned good-natured ! This, 
their own relation ! mercy on me ! [Aside. 

Mrs. Can. For my part, I own I cannot bear 
to hear a friend ill spoken of. 

Sir Pet. No, to be sure ! 

Sir Ben. Oh ! you are of a moral turn. 
Mrs. Candour and I can sit for an hour and 
hear Lady Stucco talk sentiment. 

Lady Teaz. Nay, I vow Lady Stucco is very 
well with the dessert after dinner; for she's 
just like the French fruit one cracks for mot- 
toes — made up of paint and proverb. 

Mrs. Can. Well, I will never join in ridicul- 
ing a friend ; and so I constantly tell my cousin 
Ogle, and you all know what pretensions she 
has to be critical on beauty. 

Crab. Oh, to be sure ! she has herself the 
oddest countenance that ever was seen ; 'tis a 
collection of features from all the different 
countries of the globe. 

Sir Ben. So she has, indeed— an Irish 
front 

Crab. Caledonian locks 

Sir Ben. Dutch nose 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 45 

Crab. Austrian lips 

Sir Ben. Complexion of a Spaniard 

Crab. And teeth h la Chinoise 

Sir Ben. In short, her face resembles a table 
d'hote at Spa — where no two guests are of a 
nation 

Crab. Or a congress at the close of a gen- 
eral war— wherein all the members, even to 
her eyes, appear to have a different interest, 
and her nose and chin are the only parties 
likely to join issue. 

Mrs. Ca?u Ha ! ha ! ha ! 

Sir Pet. Mercy on my life !— a person they 
dine with twice a week ! [Aside. 

Mrs. Can. Nay, but I vow you shall not 
carry the laugh oflf so — for give me leave to say 
that Mrs. Ogle 

Sir Pet. Madam, madam, I beg your pardon 
— there's no stopping these good gentlemen's 
tongues. But when I tell you, Mrs. Candour, 
that the lady they are abusing is a particular 
friend of mine, I hope you'll not take her part. 

Lady Sneer. Ha ! ha ! ha ! well said, Sir 
Peter ! but you are a cruel creature — too phleg- 
matic yourself for a jest, and too peevish to 
allow wit in others. 

Sir Pet. Ah, madam, true wit is more nearly 
allied to good nature than your ladyship is 
aware of. 

Lady Teaz. True, Sir Peter ; I believe they 
are so near akin that they can never be united. 

Sir Ben. Or, rather, suppose them man and 
wife, because one seldom sees them together. 

Lady Teaz. But Sir Peter is such an enemy 



46 ESSAYS IN 

to scandal, I believe he would have it put down 
by parliament. 

Sir Pet. 'Fore heaven, madam, if they were 
to consider the sporting with reputation of as 
much importance as poaching on manors, and 
pass an act for the preservation of fame as well 
as game, I believe many would thank them for 
the bill. 

Lady Sneer. O Lud ! Sir Peter ; would you 
deprive us of our privileges ? 

Sir Pet. Ay, madam ; and then no person 
should be permitted to kill characters and run 
down reputations but quaHfied old maids and 
disappointed widows. 

Lady Sneer, Go, you monster ! 

Mrs. Can. But, surely, you would not be 
quite so severe on those who only report what 
they hear ? 

Sir Pet. Yes, madam, I would have law 
merchant for them too ; and in all cases of 
slander currency, whenever the drawer of the 
lie was not to be found, the injured parties 
should have a right to come on any of the 
indorsers. 

Crab. Well, for my part, I believe there 
never was a scandalous tale without some 
foundation. 

In this treatment we see a combination 
of Moliere's method with Congreve's : 
Sir Peter's attitude is similar to that of 
Alceste, although we notice he is less 
skilfully connected by the dramatist 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 47 

with the main action : two of his most 
important speeches are given as asides. 
In the balancing distribution of his good 
lines to several characters instead of cen- 
tering them upon one, Sheridan has 
followed Congreve. The wit of the latter, 
it seems to me, is superior to that of 
the former, for Congreve detects and 
points out real resemblances between 
things apparently incongruous, while 
Sheridan throws a garish light upon re- 
semblances that are often merely whim- 
sical and fantastical. Congreve presents 
us with a miniature of life firm in its 
drawing, rich in its coloring; Sheridan 
gives us a caricature, wonderfully clever 
in its depiction of salient features, but 
still a caricature. For the purpose of 
interesting and amusing an average audi- 
ence, the Sheridan method is undoubted- 
ly the more effective : given the condi- 
tions of the drama to-day, it is therefore 
theatrically the better. Yet, when a 
majority of us shall have risen from 
what Mill justly calls our present low 
plane of culture, we shall realize, I think, 
that despite the defects of his age Con- 
greve is a greater artist than Sheridan, 
and that greater than either is Moliere. 



II. 

IS THE ACTOR'S ART UNWORTHY? 



Few things are more humorous than 
the sight of a humorist taking himself 
seriously. Such an edifying spectacle is 
presented to the world in the person of 
Mr. Augustine Birrell, barrister at-Iaw, 
author of "Obiter Dicta" and other 
delightful brochures. Readers of these 
essays will agree with me, I am sure, 
that humor is Mr. Birrell' s strong point, 
and that so long as he sticks to his last 
hardly a shoemaker of their acquaintance 
could do better. But in his "Kssay on 
Actors" Mr. Birrell has not only made 
the mistake intimated above, but has also 
committed the literary crime of printing 
his opinions upon a subject with which 
he seems to be but superficially acquaint- 
ed. His condemnation of the actor's art 
as unworthy is a conclusion which he 
reaches by a method of argument any- 
thing but judicial — a method which is, in 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 49 

fact, notliing more nor less than a special 
plea for the prosecution. Such a treat- 
ment of a literary topic doubtless came 
naturally to him as a result of his training 
as a law5^er, whose business it must often 
be to make out a strong case by the 
simple process of selecting from a mass 
of testimony all the facts that tell for his 
side and suppressing or belittling all 
those which tell for the other side. This 
is good forensics ; it is excellent practice 
for debaters ; but it is not criticism. 

The actor's art, says Mr. Birrell, is un- 
worthy of an artist, and the first argu- 
ment he brings forward in proof of this 
general proposition is the argument from 
antiquity. By a trite story he proves, 
easily enough, that among the Romans 
the actor's art was held in light esteem ; 
there he rests this portion of his case, 
leaving the impression upon the reader's 
mind that the wise men of the ancient 
world thought as little of the histrio as 
does Mr. Birrell. 

To this argument there are two replies. 
In the first place, the argument from an- 
tiquity has here little force, because the 
conditions of ancient and modern life are 
so vastly different. I^ife in modern so- 



50 ESSAYS IN 

ciety is far deeper, richer, fuller and more 
complex than in ancient society; the art 
of the modern actor, whose business it is 
to represent this life, is therefore deeper, 
richer, fuller and more complex than that 
of his ancient prototype. It calls for a 
higher intellectuality, and may reason- 
ably be thought as much superior to 
ancient acting as modern literature is to 
ancient. The condemnation of the actor's 
art, then, by the Roman world was a 
condemnation of a very simple thing with 
which that world was well acquainted. 
To apply this condemnation to another 
and a very complex thing, of which that 
world knew nothing, is absurd and il- 
logical. 

In the second place, if the opinion of 
antiquity upon a fine art is to be quoted, 
why quote only the opinion of the Ro- 
mans, one of the most inartistic peoples 
that has ever existed and one that is 
conspicuous for its failure in the particular 
art under discussion ? In war and in law 
the Romans were great and original ; in 
the fine arts they were weak and imi- 
tators of the Greeks. Roman painting, 
so far as we know anything about it, 
is based upon Greek masters ; Roman 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 5 1 

sculpture is the same ; Roman archi- 
tecture fails to unite the beautiful with 
the useful. In Epic poetry Virgil is con- 
fessedly the imitator of Homer ; in Lyric, 
Horace is, strictly speaking, not a poet at 
all, but an extremely clever man of the 
world, expressing his sententious maxims 
in art forms which he learned from the 
Greek lyrists ; in dramatic poetry the 
comedy writers, Plautus and Terence, 
are little more than adapters of the Greek 
writers Menander and Apollodorus, while 
in tragedy Rome cannot show a single 
name more distinguished than that of the 
turgid Seneca. The opinion of such a 
people upon a question of fine art is 
worth very little ; the opinion of their 
masters, the Greeks, may be worth a 
great deal. Now, among the Greeks the 
actor's art was not held in light esteem. 
It was a common custom for the poet 
who was honored by receiving from the 
State a prize for his play, himself to 
enact the principal part in that play. 
This was done not only by Aeschylus, 
but also by the most artistic poet of the 
ancient world, — Sophocles, 

* * * whose even-balanced soul 

From first youth tested up to extreme old age, 



52 ESSAYS IN 

Business could not make dull, nor passion wild; 
Who saw life steadily and saw it whole; 
The mellow glory of the Attic stage, 
Singer of sweet Colonus and his child. 

Turning from ancient to modern times, 
Mr. Birrell next attempts to show the 
actor's art unworthy because from its 
very nature it leaves little or no record to 
account for his fame. This argument 
proves too much : it applies equally well 
to great singers like Jenny Lind and 
Patti ; yet who shall call their art un- 
worthy? It applies also to such painters as 
Zeuxis and Apelles, of whose work there 
remains nothing but the names ; extend 
your time-limit but a very little and it 
will apply also to such painters as 
Tintoretto and Reubens, whose handi- 
work is fast fading from the perishable 
canvas ; yet is their art unworthy ? 

In support of this portion of his argu- 
ment Mr. Birrell commits himself to the 
astounding declaration that ' ' This, per- 
haps, is why no man of lofty genius 
or character has ever condescended to 
remain an actor." (!) Now this remark 
betrays such a profound ignorance of the 
history of the drama as to make one 
believe that Mr. Birrell has never heard 



1 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 53 

of a country called France and of a 
certain actor-poet, there somewhat es- 
teemed, called Moliere. As to character, 
Moliere was one of the most beautiful 
and unselfish souls the world has ever 
seen. His life was one long struggle 
against folly and superstition. His death 
was hastened by his untiring devotion to 
the members of the little company who 
depended upon him for support. As to 
his genius, I will merely quote from the 
words of an English critic not given 
to overpraise of anything French. In his 
essay on "The French Play in London," 
Matthew Arnold writes: '^ The Misan- 
thrope and The Tarttiffe are comedy, but 
they are comedy in verse, poetic comedy. 
* * * Immense power has gone to the 
making of them, — a world of vigorous 
sense, piercing observation, pathetic me- 
diation, profound criticism of life. Mo- 
liere had also one great advantage as a 
dramatist over Shakespeare : he wrote 
for a more developed theatre, a more 
developed society. Moreover, he was at 
the same time, probably, by nature a 
better theatre-poet than Shakespeare ; he 
had a keener sense for theatrical situa- 
tion. Shakespeare is not rightly to be 



54 ESSAYS IN 

called, as Goethe calls him, an epitom- 
ator rather than a dramatist ; but he may 
rightly be called rather a dramatist than 
a theatre-poet. Moliere — and here his 
French nature stood him in good stead — 
was a theatre-poet of the very first 
order." Now this man was an actor 
during his whole life ; yet Mr. Birrell 
would have us believe that '' no man 
of lofty genius or character has ever con- 
descended to remain an actor." 

Other instances, such as that of Kdwin 
Booth, might be detailed to overthrow 
Mr. Birrell's absurd generalization, but 
for the purposes of the argument the case 
of Moliere will perhaps suffice. 

Mr. Birrell then quotes from the ' ' Son- 
nets of Shakespeare " and the '' Memoirs 
of Macready " and of Mrs. Siddons to 
show that these actors despised their 
calling, and concludes with another 
generalization that must make logicians 
weep: '*The volunteered testimony of 
actors," he says, ''is both large in bulk 
and valuable in quality, and it is all on 
my side." 

To dispose of the generalization first, 
there is plenty of testimony to show that 
fine actors do not despise their calling. 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 55 

It is too much, perhaps, to expect that 
Mr. Birrell should be acquainted with 
books published in a place so far beyond 
his horizon-line as New Yoik, yet if he 
could stretch his intellectual vision that 
far he would discover there in the "Auto- 
biography of Joseph Jefferson" and in 
Winter's "Life of Kdwm Booth" con- 
siderable testimony that is not on his 
side Some acquaintance with the utter- 
ances of the leading actor of his own 
country Mr. Birrell might reasonably be 
supposed to possess. Yet he seems never 
to have heard of the following words of 
Sir Henry Irving, spoken nearly seven 
years ago before the Philosophical Insti- 
tution of Kdinburgb : " * * * every 
actor who is more than a mere machine, 
and who has an ideal of any kind, has a 
duty which lies beyond the scope of 
his personal anabition. His art must be 
something to hold in reverence if he 
wishes others to hold it in esteem. There 
is nothing of chance about this work. 
All, actors and audience alike, must bear 
in mind that the whole scheme of the 
higher drama is not to be regarded as 
a game in life which can be played with 
varying success. Its present intention 



56 ESSA.YS IN 

may be to interest and amuse, but its 
deeper purpose is earnest, intense, sin- 
cere." Ttiese are hardly the words of a 
man who despises his calling. 

As to Shakespeare's testimony, to quote 
the passing emotion expressed in the one 
hundred and tenth sonnet as if it were his 
settled conviction as to the unworthiness 
of his calling, this is as absurd as to say 
that he deliberately attempted suicide 
because, in the sixty-sixth sonnet, he 
wrote, 

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, 

absurd as it would be to represent 
Shakespeare as a weak-minded railer at 
destiny because in the twenty-ninth son- 
net he tells us that he beweeps his out- 
cast state, troubles deaf heaven with 
bootless cries and curses his fate. All 
such outbursts are lyrical — that is, they 
are the powerful expression of some 
single and transient emotion. From any 
single utterance, little or nothing can 
be inferred as to the writer's permanent 
convictions on any large topic. 

Finally, Mr. Birrell gives away his 
whole case in the last paragraph but one 
of his essay. He there allows that the 



Dramatic CRitidisM 57 

actor's calling is "lawful, useful, de- 
lightful," but still he will not allow that 
it is "worthy." But one of the three 
concessions here granted is necessary, 
since things useful are things worthy. 
The actor's art is useful because, like 
that of the poet, the painter, the sculptor, 
it tends to increase the amount of pleas- 
urable emotions and so tends to make life 
richer and fuller. Well has it been said 
by one, himself an actor: "If he (the 
actor) can smite water from the rock 
of one hardened human heart, — if he can 
bring light to the eye or wholesome color 
to the faded cheek, — if he can bring or 
restore in ever so slight degree the sun- 
shine of hope, of pleasure, of gayety, — 
surely he cannot have worked in vain.** 



III. 

SOMB ESSENTIALS OF THE 
ACTOR'S ART. 



My friend Mr. Joseph Holland is a 
delightful walking demonstration of so 
much in the art of acting, that I hope he 
will allow me to put his name at the top 
of this essay as a pattern into which I 
may weave the threads of my discourse. 
If, when I stop work, the reader is un- 
able clearly to distinguish the outlines 
of the figure, I am willing to have him 
believe that it is the fault of the weaver 
and not of the pattern. 

Mr. Holland has the first requisite for 
the actor's art — sensibility, or an instinct- 
ive feeling for histrionic effects. There- 
fore is he a good actor without being 
a great one. Were he the latter he would 
have added to his sensibility an acute 
and vigorous intellectuality : he would 
not be playing this year in farce, however 
good, but in high comedy or in tragedy. 



fiRAMAYie CRITICISM S9 

In all presentations of the actoi's art, 
save the very highest, it is indeed tem- 
perament or sensibility which is most 
important. Many clever people have 
failed upon the stage and have found 
their failure utterly inexplicable, because 
they could not or would not recognize 
this basal principle. On the other hand, 
many people of the most ordinary in- 
tellect have succeeded on the stage 
because they possessed this temperament 
or feeling. Such people, provided they 
are not absolutely stupid, can be taught 
to act just as anybody above the level of 
a cre/i?i can be taught the elements of 
drawing and of carpentry. Thackeray 
saw this very clearly, and in the charac- 
ter of Miss Fotheringay has described, in 
his own inimitable manner, the process 
by which a person who possesses this 
temperament in even a slight degree may 
achieve stage success. In '* Pendennis" 
he writes : *'Bows * * * was a sin- 
gular wild man of no small talents and 
humor. Attracted first by Miss Fother- 
ingay's beauty, he began to teach her 
how to act. He shrieked out in his 
cracked voice the parts, and his pupil 
learned them from his lips by rote and 



60 ESSAYS IJ^ 

repeated them in her full, rich tones. 
He indicated the attitudes and set and 
moved those beautiful arms of hers. 
Those who remember this grand actress 
on the stage can recall how she used 
always precisely the same gestures, looks 
and tones ; how she stood on the same 
plank of the stage in the same position, 
rolled her eyes at the same instant and to 
the same degree, and wept with precisely 
the same heart-rending pathos and ov^er 
the same pathetic syllable." 

To turn from fiction to history, we see 
this same general principle illustrated in 
the case of the most prominent actress of 
our day, Sarah Bernhardt. Nearly twenty 
years ago Matthew Arnold wrote of her : 
" Temperament and quick intelligence, 
passion, nervous mobility, grace, smile, 
voice, charm, poetry — [she] has them all. 
One watches her with pleasure, with 
admiration, and yet not without a secret 
disquietude. Something is wanting, or 
at least not present in sufiicient force; 
something which alone can secure and 
fix her administration of all the charming 
gifts which she has, can alone keep them 
fresh, keep them sincere, save them from 
perils by caprice, perils by mannerism. 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 6t 

That something is high intellectual 
power." The prophecy implied in these 
words has been remarkably fulfilled. In- 
sincerity, caprice and mannerism have 
become more and more prominent in 
Sarah Bernhardt since those words were 
written. With her great natural gifts 
she can never sink to the level of the 
mediocre, but, lacking this "high in- 
tellectual power," she has never risen to 
the level of the great — of that Rachel, for 
instance, with whom Arnold compares 
her and of whom he says that "she be- 
gan almost where Mile. Sarah Bernhardt 
ends." 

If temperament unaided by high intel- 
lectuality cannot make a great actor, 
neither can this be accomplished by high 
intellectuality unaided by the necessary 
temperament. Sir Henry Irving, it seems 
to me, is a proof of this : he is a man who 
has made himself what he is by sheer 
force of will and intellect unaided by any 
particular natural aptitude for his profes- 
sion. Only in those rare cases where 
temperament and high intellect are united 
do we find really great artists ; such were 
Garrick, Talma, Rachel and Booth; such 
an artist is Mr. Jefferson. 



62 MBAn fJsT 

If we descend from these generals to 
particulars, to what may be called the 
minor requisites of the actor's art, we find 
in Mr. Holland a model which all young 
aspirants for stage honors would do well 
to study. In the first place, he possesses 
the rare art of Klocution, without which 
the actor's voice is but as the sounding 
brass and the tinkling cymbal. Nothing 
is more justly infuriating to an audience 
than to miss even a small portion of the 
dialogue upon the stage, yet the actors 
who can so speak as to make every word 
audible in every portion of the house are 
the exceptions and not the rule. This 
comes either from incapacity or from 
carelessness ; if from the former, the 
actor should be retired to private life by 
his manager ; if from the latter, it is 
entirely inexcusable and should not be 
tolerated by the audience. Such an actor 
in England or in Italy would be hissed 
off the stage ; that he is not so treated in 
the United States is but another instance 
of that easy-going indifferentism which 
Mr. Herbert Spencer points out as among 
our national failings. 

Next among the minor graces of the 
actor may be mentioned Repose, the 



objective manifestation of which is the 
Art of Standing Still. Easy as this may 
appear from the front, those on the stage 
know (or should know) that it is indeed 
difficult ; it is an art by most actors more 
honored in the breach than in the observ- 
ance. The reason for their common 
failure in this respect is evident. Acting, 
by its very name implies action, which 
leads the actor to forget that not all 
acting implies action. Many times in a 
play the interest needs to be centered 
upon the person speaking : these are the 
times when the other people on the stage 
need to cultivate the arts of listening and 
of standing still, yet how few of them do ! 
But when done, how greatly this enhances 
the verisimilitude of the stage picture ! 
Those who have seen Mr. McDowell in 
Gismonda as he stands listening to the 
impassioned speeches of the Duchess, 
will recognize what I mean. There are 
even occasions when, in the very torrent 
and tempest of passionate declamation, 
the actor who knows how to stand still 
can give an appearance of solidity and 
force to his work which cannot be 
achieved by one who has not mastered 
this art 



64 les^AYg m 

Sir Henry Irving has pointed out that 
a Bearing or Carriage suitable to the time 
in which the play is set is a not unimpor- 
tant detail in the actor's art ''The free 
bearing of the sixteenth century," he 
says, " is distinct from the artificial one 
of the seventeenth, the mannered one of 
the eighteenth and the careless one of the 
nineteenth." This nineteenth century 
bearing Mr. Holland has, it seems to me, 
in perfection : his manner and tone are 
thoroughly easy and careless, yet never 
slipshod or vulgar. Nor is this easy 
bearing such an easy thing to acquire. 
Witness the case of Mr. I^ucius Henderson, 
who, intelligent actor though he is, in 
playing a modern part similar to Mr. 
Holland's, makes the mistake of carrying 
it with the " free bearing of the sixteenth 
century." 

Perfection, it has been well said, is 
made up of little things, but perfection 
is not a little thing. 



IV. 
THE ENDOWED THEATRE- 



I. 

There is little doubt that of recent 
3'ears Shakespeare has been more appre- 
ciated as a playright in Germany than in 
England. Not many years ago one 
theatre in Berlin, the Koenigsliche 
Schauspielhaus,* during a short season of 
only four months, presented no less than 
four Shakespearean plays, the Midsiim- 
7ner NighV s Dream, the Winter' s Tale, 
Havilet, Othello — the last-named fre- 
quently. In the year ending December 
31, 1896, there were one hundred and 
thirty-five recorded performances of 
Othello in Germany, and this year an 
English company, headed by Mr. Forbes 
Robertson, is to play Havilet and Macbeth 
in Hamburg, Munich, Frankfort, Han- 



*For the Koenigsliche .Schauspielhaus statis- 
tics. I am indebted to an article by Mr. Wm. 
Archer in the Fortnightly Review, Vol. 51, 
page 610. 



66 ESSAYS IN 

over and Berlin. If this state of affairs 
does not entirely prove the modest claim 
of our German friends — that Shakespeare 
was a German — it may certainly afford 
them at least reasonable ground for their 
conviction that he ought to have been. 

While the Germans have been en- 
gaged in acting Shakespeare, Shake- 
speare's own countrymen have been 
engaged principally in writing books 
about him — and such books! Most 
of them fully justify the despairing 
wail of one who exclaimed after wading 
through an extensive slough of Shake- 
spearean commentaries: "If you would 
know the heights to which the human 
intellect can rise, read Shakespeare ; if 
you would know the depths to which it 
can fall, read his commentators.'' To 
such an extreme has the pedantry of the 
English been carried that in many of their 
annotated editions of Shakespeare the 
notes actuallj^ occupy more space than 
the text, and it is through the distorting 
medium of these notes that the feeble 
vision of the young student is expected 
to pierce before he can see, face to 
face, the clearest and greatest mind of 
the poetic world. Some commentators, 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 67 

such as Mr. Andrew Lang, liave even 
argued themselves into the ridiculous 
belief that the Shakespearean plaj-s 
should never be acted, but simply be 
read. Onl}^ thus, they seem to think, 
can the supersensitive, ultra-refined, 
delicately attuned, critical mind (of the 
Lang type), only thus can it preserve 
intact ideal conceptions of Shakespear- 
ean characters ; ideals which would be 
rudely shattered by seeing these char- 
acters embodied in such flesh and blood 
as Miss Ellen Terry. 

Against this school of faddists and 
against the general apathy of the English 
people to their greatest dramatic writer, 
Sir Henry Irving has combated long and 
for many years single-handed. By means 
of gorgeous mountings and elaborate 
scenic eflfects the English people have 
actually had to be coaxed to come and 
see Shakespearean plays, while the same 
plays, mounted simply but sufficiently, 
were drawing steadily in Germany by 
the intrinsic merit of their characteriza- 
tion and their poetry. But the work 
done at the Lyceum in London during 
these long years is beginning to tell : 
gentlemen interested in art in the pro- 



68 ESSAYS IN 

vincial cities of England have formed 
themselves into committees for the en- 
couragement of the classical drama; they 
provide funds for this purpose and under 
their auspices some competent company is 
engaged to present Shakespearean plays 
at moderate prices. This plan has met 
with great success, Mr. Benson's companj'-, 
for example, having recently played for 
two weeks in Glasgow to good houses, 
presenting Hamlet^ Twelfth Nighty Henry 
v., The Tammg of the Shrew and Julius 
CcBsar. Nor is the interest confined to the 
provinces. In London we have this year 
three carefully prepared Shakespearean 
revivals ; the Me^xhant of Ve7iice at the 
Lyceum, Julms Ccesar at Her Majesty's 
and Much Ado About Nothing at the St. 
James. The wave has reached even the 
universities. At Oxford, where, accord- 
ing to Mr. Churton Collins, there is a 
professorship of almost everything under 
the sun, except English literature, — at 
Oxford the Students' Dramatic Society 
has played Romeo and Juliet with consid- 
erable success for a whole week. 

At last, then, the English are beginning 
to remove from themselves the reproach 
which I stated in the opening sentence of 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 69 

this article. They are educating their 
people up to an appreciation of the best 
that has been thought and done in the 
drama. They are doing this by the only 
means possible, that is, by regarding the 
drama seriously as a fine art, and not as 
a form of speculative investment which 
must be made to return fifteen or twenty 
per cent, upon the capital put in. This 
last-mentioned way of looking at the 
drama is the one prevalent in the United 
States ; the first-mentioned way has long 
been prevalent in France and Germany. 
That is why the French and German 
theatres are so much better than ours, and 
when I say the}^ are better, I mean that 
they present in better shape than do ours 
a larger number of plays that appeal to 
moral and intelligent people, that is, to 
the people whose hearts and brains keep 
the world a-going and the race advancing. 
This statement I shall now proceed to 
prove first for Germany, then for France. 
I shall then endeavor to show that it is 
possible for Americans no less than for 
Frenchmen and Germans to carry into 
successful practice a theory of the drama 
as a fine art as distinguished from the 
drama as afield for mercantile speculation. 



70 ESSAYS IN 

First, as to Germanj^ In addition to 
the facts stated in the opening paragraph 
of this article, I would mention that in 
the same brief season and at the one 
Berlin theatre there referred to, there 
were also presented the following stand- 
ard plays : Frey tag's Die Jotirnalisten^ 
Heyse's Colberg^ Undau's Tayite Therese, 
Calderon's La Vide es Sueno, Kleist's 
Das Zerbrochne Krug^ Lessing's Emilia 
Galotti and Min7ia von Barnhelm^ 
Schiller's Wallenstein, Kabale und Liebe^ 
Maria Stuart^ Goethe's Egniont. Is 
there any theatre in London or New 
York that can present such a record as 
this or anything approaching to it ? I 
fear we must hide our diminished heads 
and sadly answer, No. 

Now, this is not an exceptional record, 
nor is it a picked case ; many other 
German cities can make a showing quite 
as creditable in proportion to their popu- 
lation. Some of these cities are much 
smaller than San Francisco ; the little 
Saxon town of Halle, for instance, with 
a population less than one-third of ours, 
has a municipal theatre building which 
it is a delight to the eyes to behold and 
in which a well- organized company pre- 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 7 1 

sents frequently the great classic plays of 
the German and the English stage. If we 
extend our view to the whole of Germany, 
we find that during the year 1896, there 
were performed twenty-three separate 
Shakespearean plays with a total of 
nearly a thousand representations. Had 
we at hand the figures for the Goethe, 
Lessing and Schiller performances, we 
may be sure that they would show 
equally remarkable results. 

As to rendition, I wnll leave it to those 
who have seen performances at the 
endowed theatres of Halle, Munich and 
Berlin to say whether these performances 
are not decidedlj'- more artistic than what 
one sees, with rare exceptions, in any 
New York theatre. 

Any candid person who will look the 
facts squarely in the face will admit now, 
I believe, that I have proved for Germany 
the thesis with which I started — namely, 
that the German stage presents in better 
shape than does ours a larger number of 
plays that appeal to moral and intelligent 
people. 

Turning now to France, I shall select, 
almost at random, the record of a month's 
performances — say, December last — at 



72 KSSAYS IN 

the two best Parisian theatres, the 
Comedie Fraiigaise and the Odeon, and I 
shall compare this record with that of the 
performances during the same month at 
the two best San Francisco theatres, the 
Baldwin and the Columbia. 

Among the forty-two performances 
given at the Comedie Frangaise there 
were representations of the works of such 
excellent minor playwrights as Pailleron, 
Scribe and Erckman-Chatrian. Among 
the great writers we find, of the moderns, 
Dumas fils represented by four perform- 
ances, at which were presented V ^tran- 
gere and L'Ami des Femmes ; Augier, 
five performances, at which were pre- 
sented Les Effrontes and Le Gendre de 
M. Powier. Among the French classic 
writers Racine comes first with six per- 
formances, two of Les Plaideurs and four 
of Athalie. Then comes Moliere with 
four performances, three of Les Femmes 
Savantes 2iVLd, one oi L'Avare. Of writers 
of the first rank, then, namely, Dumas 
fils, Augier, Racine, Moliere, there were 
nineteen performances out of a total of 
forty-two ; that is, nearly half the plays 
given were classics. A correspondingly 
good record for New York or San 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 73 

Francisco theatres would have to read 
something like this : Bronson Howard, 
four performances ; Goldsmith, five ; 
Shakespeare, six ; Sheridan, four. And 
even this is stretching the truth a bit in 
our favor. Let us look at the record 
of the Baldwin Theatre for the same 
month of December ; it is brief and de- 
cisive : 1)1 Gay New York (author un- 
known), five performances ; The Jucklins 
(Augustus Thomas), five performances. 

This is the whole of the short, sad story. 
Let it stand there, monumentally, in all 
its sweet simplicity. 

Lest it be claimed that the time cover- 
ed by this record is too short to base 
a fair comparison on, I will state that 
I have made a list of every play given at 
the Frangaise and at the Odecn during 
the four months, December, 1897, to 
April, 1898, and have compared this with 
the record of the San Francisco theatres 
mentioned above and of the two leading 
New York theatres (Daly's and The 
Empire). The publication of this list in 
detail would make us appear in no better 
light than we do above, but rather in 
a worse — if that be possible. 



74 ESSAYS IN 



111 his attempt to account for the 
scarcity of good comedy in England, Mr. 
George Meredith divides society mainly 
into two classes. Firsts the Puritans or 
Agelasts, who wdll laugh at nothing and 
who never go to the theatre ; second, the 
Bacchanalians, who are titillated by a 
wink and will laugh at anything. To 
neither of these classes does true comedy 
appeal, and as these two classes constitute 
a vast majority of English society, in that 
society comedy does not flourish. 

If one might draw an inference from 
the plays presented at the San Francisco 
theatres during the week in which I 
write (April 17 — 24, 1898), one might 
believe that Mr. Meredith's analysis is 
as true of our society as of his. With 
the exception of the opera, — of w^hich it 
is not my province here to speak, — there 
was certainly little or nothing to draw 
the Puritans to the theatre ; or, to put it 
conversely, every play presented — A 
Stranger in New York^ Dehnonico' s at 
SiXy The Strange Adventures of Miss 
BrowHj Sinbad — appealed only to the 
bacchanalians, that is, to the people who 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 75 

can laugh at anything. Sympathizhig 
with the latter class as little as I do with 
the former, I must confess that I find 
nothing in the plays above mentioned 
that is worth even the briefest critical 
notice. I shall, therefore, ask the reader 
to transport himself once more with me 
to Paris, where we shall consider the 
plays presented last December at the 
Odeon, and shall compare them with the 
plays given during the same month at 
our second theatre, the Columbia. 

The Odeon is situated, as everyone 
knows, at the north-east corner of the 
Jardin du Luxembourg. Near it are the 
buildings of the ficole des Mines, the 
Bcole de Medecine, the Sorbonne and the 
ficole Poly technique. In this quarter of 
Paris, therefore, do students largel}^ con- 
gregate, and this fact, for many years, 
affected the character of the performances 
given there. The educational authorities 
recognized and still recognize the im- 
mense educative force of the theatre, and 
the Government took care to see that 
a theatre largely patronized by students 
should include in its repertoire many 
standard classical dramas. Of recent 
years less supervision seems to have been 



76 KSSAYS IN 

exercised in this respect, and the Od6on 
has run more to modern plaj^s, leaving 
the classics to the Comedie Frangaise. 
Yet these modern plays are the best 
of their kind procurable, Richepin's Le 
Chemineaic, for instance, of which there 
were twenty-three performances at the 
Odeon in December last, is a well-written, 
highly poetical, pastoral comedy, which 
would have been a dead failure on any 
Knglish or American stage, — because 
poetical. Nor were the classic dramatists 
unrepresented at the Odeon during the 
time under consideration. Moliere's Le 
Sicilien ou V A^noiir Peintre was given 
twice ; Racine's Phedj^e^ Athaliey Les 
Plaideurs twice each. Out of a total 
of thirty - seven performances, then, 
twenty-three were of a modern play quite 
as good as Henry Arthur Jones' Mas- 
quer aders^ and eight were by Racine and 
Moliere — a combination which represents 
to the French mind about what we ex- 
press by the one word Shakespeare. 

If we turn now to our home theatre, 

the Columbia, we find the following : 

Two performances of Othello and three of 

Julius CcBsar ; sixteen of Koyt's A Milk- 

White Flag, six brandishings of a dra- 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 77 

matic crazy-quilt (by one Williams) 
called A Cavalier of France y one turning- 
on of the blood-bath yclept Spartaais, 
five rattlings of a child's kaleidoscope 
labeled Li Gay Coney Island. If from 
this ill assorted heap we pick out the 
diamonds of Mr. William Shakespeare 
and the rhinestones of Mr. Charles Hoyt, 
I fear the rubbish that is left will not 
compare favorably with the finished work 
of Monsieur Jean Richepin. 

There may be two ways of looking at 
the facts suggested by this comparison. 
One is to exclaim, as did Sir Sampson 
Legend, at the ingratitude of his son, 
"Body o' me, these things are unaccount- 
able and unreasonable!" Another is to 
acknowledge that our practice is lament- 
ably deficient and to try and find out 
upon what deficient theory this practice 
is based. I^et us try the latter ; the pro- 
blem is not a difficult one, and is practic- 
ally solved by the statement of it made in 
the first part of this article, namely, that 
the French regard the drama seriously as 
a fine art and as an educative force well 
worth the attention of the best minds 
in the community ; we regard it merely 



78 ESSAYS IN 

as an amusement and abandon it as a 
field for speculation to those whose prime 
interest must be to get the largest pos- 
sible return out of it. Now, you can treat 
sheep and wheat and corner-lots in this 
way with perfect reason and with entire 
success, because your dealings with these 
objects have very little effect upon 
human character and human motives ; 
but when you come to treat a fine art 
such as painting or the drama in this 
way, you invariably degrade it ; to make 
it pay 3^ou must make it appeal to the 
average moral sense and the average 
intellect. Now this average moral sense 
and this average intellect in our present 
state of civilization are low, and an 
art that appeals to them for support mu.st 
necessarily be far from ideal. 

Only by making your fine art, to some 
extent at least, independent of popular 
opinion and of popular approval, only 
thus can you expect that it will live 
and grow and develop into what it 
should be. Strange as it may seem, too, 
if you are careful to do this it will in the 
long run really pay — not 20 per cent 
on the investment, perhaps, but a thou- 
sandfold — in the elevating and refining 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 79 

influence it will exercise in the com- 
munity. 

Something of this kind has been dimly 
perceived by many Americans, and clear- 
ly by a few. These few are typified by 
the generous men and women who, 
within a few years, have given no less 
than eleven million dollars to found the 
University of Chicago. Their donation 
has gone into what is technically known 
in this country as higher education — 
that is, education by means of libraries 
and laboratories and professors. These 
donors have done nothing for the drama 
since they have not perceived, or have 
not realized, the tremendous educative 
power of that art. This has been per- 
ceived by the Germans and the French, 
whose governments subsidize their 
theatres on exactly the same principles 
as those on which they — and we — sub- 
sidize pul^lic schools. 

Admirably as this plan of govern- 
mental subsidy works in Germany and 
in France, no rational being would advo- 
cate its adoption here. Kveu if desirable, 
it would for many reasons be impossible, 
and it is not desirable. Yet, before 
tnany years, I believe, the problem of 



8o ESSAYS IN 

organizing an endowed theatre will be 
forced upon us, and we may learn some- 
thing beforehand by noticing at what 
cost and by what kind of an organization 
the French people have made their 
theatre the first in the world. 

The site alone of the Grand Opera 
House in Paris cost ten and a half 
million francs; the building 35,600,000 
francs. It receives from the government 
an annual subvention of 800,000 francs. 
The Theatre Frangais receives annually 
240,000 francs ; the Odeon, 100,000 ; the 
Opera Comique, 300,000 ; the Conserva- 
toire and Snccursales, 220,000. The pro- 
vincial cities also contribute generously 
for a like purpose. From the latest 
statistics I have been able to obtain, I 
learn that the subvention at the Mar- 
seilles theatre is 220,000 francs; at Lyons, 
250.000; while even such small cities as 
Toulouse and Lille contribute respectively 
87,000 and 75,000 francs. France is not 
as rich a country, either absolutely or 
relatively, as the United States. If she 
can afford to do this much surely we can 
afford to do as much. But for my part 
I should be satisfied if we could make a 
start with one-half of what the French 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 8 1 

people pay to one theatre, the Com6die 
Fran^aise. That institution receives in 
round numbers $50,000 a year from the 
government ; this at 5 per cent represents 
a capitalization of $1,000,000. Let some 
rich man who wishes to see the theatre 
v/hat it should be in our community — 
let him give merely half a million for 
endowment, and he will do more good, I 
believe, with his money than he could in 
any other way. 

To make such a theatre a success the 
first essential is a good organization, and 
in affecting this we should not need to go 
upon blind theories. The present organi- 
zation of the Theatre Frangais has been 
in successful operation for eighty-six 
years, and contains several features that 
could be incorporated in the plan of an 
American-endowed theatre. By the con- 
stitution of the Frangais the actors are 
divided into two classes, sociitaires and 
pensio7inah'es. The former only are stock- 
holders and in addition to their salaries 
receive a certain percentage of the profits. 
The pensionnaires are younger and less 
experienced actors, who are serving their 
apprenticeship, and from their body the 
societaires are elected. At the end of ten 



82 ESSAYS IN 

years of service a sociiiaii^e may be 
re-elected; at the end of 20 years' service 
he ma}^ retire with a moderate pension. 
If he be a distinguished artist, he has 
then no trouble in securing profitable 
engagements at other theatres, or he may 
become a professor in the Conservatoire, 
where the actors and actresses of the next 
generation enjoy the immense advantage 
of being taught by one who has devoted 
his life to the subject in hand. So long 
as this admirable plan is faithfully 
adhered to, France can never lack 
accomplished artists. 

The Director of the Comedie Fran^aise 
is always a man distinguished in litera- 
ture and for his knowledge of the stage. 
Such a man is the present Director, 
M. Jules Claretie. He is appointed by 
the Minister of Fine Arts. Together 
with six societaires and two pe?tsio7inaires 
he forms the administrative committee of 
the organization. While he has great 
weight in the matter of accepting new 
plays, his word is by no means law on 
this point, for he is assisted and largely 
controlled by a Reading Committee 
chosen from the actors and actresses. 

Such is a very brief description of the 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 83 

constitution of this famous company. It 
has an unbroken tradition of great writers 
and actors from the days of Moliere down 
to our own ; a tradition that embraces 
the names of Corneille, Racine, La 
Fontaine, La Sage, Voltaire, Marivaux, 
Beaumarchais, Diderot, Victor Hugo, 
Alfred de Musset, Augier and Dumas ; 
Floridor, Madame Champmesle, Baron, 
Adrienne Lecouvreur, Le Kaim, Mile. 
Clairon, Talma, Mile. Mars, Got, Rachel, 
Coquelin and Sarah Bernhardt. It has a 
magnificent library, and the foyer of its 
theatre is an art gallery adorned with 
statues and pictures of the great men and 
women whose names are indissolubly 
connected with its history. With such a 
tradition, with such a home, small 
wonder is it that the Comedie Fran^aise 
stands an object-lesson to the world, an 
exemplification of what the drama ought 
to be and might be in every large and 
wealthy community. 



V. 

THE FUTURE OF THE DRAMA. 



Theophile Gautier says somewliere that 
the stage seldom gets hold of an idea 
until it has been worn threadbare in other 
places. This is largely true of the 
English stage to-day, but it was not 
always so and it need not be so in the 
future. The reasons for this a little 
consideration will reveal. 

Those praisers of times past, who look 
back with un alloy d regret to the glories 
of Elizabethan days and who look 
forward with entire hopelessness to the 
budding promise of the future, — these 
people fail to realize, it seems to me, the 
conditions which made the seventeenth 
century drama so rich in eloquence and 
in poetry ; they fail, also, to realize that 
these conditions have now given place to 
others greatly different, which, in their 
turn, we must believe, will give place to 
another and a better state of things a 
century or two hence. 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 85 

The study of sociology shows us clearly 
that in all semi-civilized peoples the head 
of the state combines in himself the 
functions of leader-inwar, priest and 
medicine man. As the political organism 
becomes more complex these functions 
become differentiated and are discharged 
by separate officials. Now, just as the 
tribal chief in primitive times united in 
himself generalship, priesthood and thera- 
peutics, so did the primitive drama of 
Elizabethan days unite in itself the arts 
of poetry and eloquence and the science, 
so far as there was a science, of history. 
What poetry, eloquence and history the 
common people then got hold of, they 
got chiefly through the drama : before 
the invention of the school textbook of 
history, the Shakespearean historical 
plays, from King John to Henry VIII., 
offered something more than an equiva- 
lent ; before parliamentary and congres- 
sional eloquence was hatched people 
heard real eloquence in such compositions 
as Antonj^'s speeches in Julius Ccesar; 
before the time when degenerates like 
Whitman could get themselves printed 
and turned loose upon a suffering world, 
people had to get most of their poetry 



S6 ItSSAYS IN 

from such descriptive verse as the Queen 
Mab speech in Romeo and Juliet, and 
from such lyrics as "O, mistress mine, 
where are you roaming? " 

Now, in the evolution of the drama, 
poetry, eloquence and history have 
become sharply differentiated ; improve- 
ments in the art of printing have made it 
possible for these branches of human 
knowledge to grow to such immense 
proportions that the primitive dramatic 
form in which they were once encased 
has long been outworn. The children 
have deserted their mother, whom they 
now look down upon from an eminence 
of lofty intellectual and emotional 
superiority, to which they think she can 
never hope to climb. Stripped of her 
history — that is, her ''philosophy teach- 
ing by experience" — stripped of her 
eloquence, stripped of her poetry, the 
drama is reduced to a mere skeleton of 
situations, and the art of play-writing has 
become little more than the art of con- 
structing situations. Now, that branch of 
dramatic writing which depends for its 
effects chiefly upon situation is farce, and 
farce, if I mistake not, is the thing that 
most interests theatre-goers to-day. 



DRAMATIC CRITICISM 87 

Another setofcousideralions will bring 
us, I think, to the same conclusion. In 
Elizabethan times the stir and stress ot 
life were not as feverish as they are now; 
competition was less keen, men were less 
eager after the material comforts of life 
and did not so often lose sight of the ends 
of existence through absorption in the 
means. When they went to the theatre 
then, they went with unjaded minds and 
a keen intellectual curiosity. To-day 
men go to the theatre fagged out with the 
rush and toil of eight or ten hours' hard 
work and suffering from the repletion of 
facts crammed down their throats by the 
thousand newspapers, books and maga- 
zines of the day. To a man thus wearied, 
the intellectual and emotional strain of 
following such a play as Macbeth or 
Philaster would be almost unendurable. 
He does not seek in the drama any 
serious food for thought or any high 
emotional effects ; he seeks merely for 
amusement and relaxation : now, high 
comedy might amuse him if he were 
quick-witted enough to follow it, but 
it will hardly relax him, because it 
calls for close attentioa in the spectator ; 
farce will both amuse and will relax his 



88 ESSAYS IN 

mental strain. Farces, therefore, or plays 
of a farcical type, are what he seeks. 

Merely to provide amusement ! Has 
the stage then really sunk to this? Is 
this the final step in the evolution of that 
noble art which can number among its 
practitioners such men as Sophocles, 
Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moliere, Goethe 
and Hugo ? I, for one, cannot believe it. 
I must believe that when men come to 
realize that railroads and factories and 
huge wheat crops and gold mines are not 
ends in themselves, but are only means 
to something better and higher, then they 
will spend less time and be less absorbed 
in those means and will demand that the 
drama shall graft into itself again those 
poetical and ethical elements which we 
see flourishing in the works of the great 
playwrights I have named. This change 
will hardly come in our day, and even 
our children's children may not see it ; 
but come some day it surely will, if our 
civilization is ever to mean anything 
more than big prices for wheat and a 
perpetual boom in corner-lots. 



I 



II. 

IMPRESSIONS. 



I. 

SHALL WK FORGIVE HER ?- 
THE SERENADE. 

{Sa7i Francisco^ February, i8g8,) 



*' Criticism," says Matthew Arnold, " is 
a disinterested endeavor to learn and pro- 
pagate the best that is known and thought 
in the world." Now, the conditions of 
the acted drama are such that it is difficult 
— except at rare intervals — for the local 
critic and his public to attain to a sight of 
that "best that is known and thought in 
the [dramatic] world," For '' the best " 
can seldom afford to travel three thousand 
miles across the continent, and merely to 
read about *' the best" is as tantalizing 
as to think how many more good plays 
Shakespeare might have written had he 
not died at fifty-three. 

Poor substitute for the delight of see- 
ing, as reading must always be, 3'et by 
reading something may be accomplished. 
There are perhaps fifty plays in English 



92 IMPRESSIONS OF 

— the delight of past generations and the 
solace of this — the reading of which may 
tend to form in our minds a standard or 
model according to which such plays as 
we see to-day may be judged. If one be 
acquainted with French, this number of 
standard plays may be increased to a 
hundred and fifty. As to rendition, while 
one must confess that a thoroughly artis- 
tic play is a treat San Francisco enjoys 
much less often than we could wish, yet 
even in the way of rendition we have seen 
performances that make us realize how 
immensely effective is the actor's art 
when practiced by a master of the pro- 
fession. Coquelin's Tartuffe and Miss 
Terry's Portia linger in my memory as 
never-to-be forgotten ideals, while Miss 
Kidder's presentation of Madame Sans- 
Gene left nothing, so far as I could see, to 
be desired. Nay, in the days when we 
were in Mr. Froh man's good books, did 
did not the Kmpire Theatre Company, 
unshorn of any of its glory, pay us only 
too short a visit ? And he who has seen 
Miss Allen and Mr. Faversham in The 
Masqueraders — that nineteenth century 
School for Scandal — he has an ideal 
for modern play- writing and modern act- 



SOME MODERN PLAYS 93 

ing to which he may nail his faith with 
justifiable confidence. 

In the criticisms upon which I shall 
now venture, I shall presuppose upon 
the part of my readers some such desire 
for knowing '^ the best " as Arnold's 
definition implies, and as much acquaint- 
ance with this "best" as is indicated 
above. To such readers, the drama must 
appeal as a fine art, with a history, with 
an evolution, and with laws of its own. 
Such an art is worth studying and worth 
writing about. " The best that is known 
and thought" in this art to-day should 
challenge comparison with ** the best that 
is known and thought " in any other art. 
When it fails to do this the failure should 
be pointed out; when it succeeds, the 
success should be generously applauded 
and the reason for it analyzed. In this 
manner may the critical faculty subserve 
the purposes of the creative faculty, blaz- 
ing the path along which the creative 
genius of the future must travel if he 
would obtain to a Pisgah-view of the 
premised land of perfection. 

Shall We Forgive Her f the English 
melodrama which Miss Wainwright has 



94 IMPRESSIONS OF 

been presenting at the Columbia, is an 
excellent example of the dismal divorce 
which has taken place in English between 
literature and the drama. Here is a play 
which contains hardly a single thought — 
hardly an expression v/hich rises above 
the commonplace. The language is not 
ungrammatical, and this is the only virtue 
one can ascribe to it ; the thought is a 
second-rate recasting of Mr. Pinero's 
effort in The Second Mrs, Tanqueray, 
The construction follows that of Haddon 
Chambers' Captaifi Swift, the chief dif- 
ference being that in this play Vve have 
a heroine, while in Captain Swift we 
have a hero. If the play were printed it 
vv^ould be as dull to read as is a page of 
Tupper's "Proverbial Philosophy"; not 
a shred of wit, humor or anything but 
surface observation of life does it show. 
Yet constructively the play is well made, 
with one or two ingenious incidents and 
a theme which, though well worn, must 
command interest so long as women are 
weak and men are cruel. 

The success of this play, at such a thea- 
tre as the Adelphi in London, shows us 
that the questions presented in ''problem 
plays " have begun to agitate the minds 



SOME MODERN PI,AYS 95 

of the middle classes of English society 
and are no longer confined to those classes 
by courtesy called *' the upper." In order 
to reach and stir the minds of this middle 
class it is necessarj% perhaps, to state the 
problem in its most elementary form and 
in the simplest, baldest language. This 
is what the author has done. Nobody 
can possibly mistake his meaning or the 
answer which he would have us give to 
the question asked by the title of his play. 
No man with his heart in the right place, 
if asked, Shall We Forgive Her ? could 
fail to answer *' Yes " ; in fact, the prob- 
lem as thus presented is really so simple 
as to be no problem at all. Any other 
answer but "Yes" to such a question 
would be impossible. When the curtain 
falls you turn to your neighbor and say 
with smug satisfaction, '' Yes, of course 
we forgive her," and you go home with 
little more food for thought than if you 
had been studying the multiplication 
table. Now, had the question been stated. 
Should We Forgive Her? here would have 
been something to think about ; some- 
thing upon which to exercise a nice dis- 
crimination and something w^hich might 
make us doubt v^^hether all is to be for- 



96 IMPRESSIONS OT? 

given to a woman because she hath greatly 
loved. Here is precisely the weakest 
point in the treatment. The woman with 
a past, when justly reproached by the man 
she has deceived, does but iterate and 
reiterate " I am your wife." This is 
evidently intended by the author to be 
accepted as full justification for such con- 
cealment as that of which poor Tess of 
the D'Urbervilles was guilty toward 
Angel Claire. Such a justification one 
may well hesitate to accept, and in many 
minds, Should We Forgive Her ? will be 
answered *' No," rather than ''Yes." 

To descend now from generals to par- 
ticulars, the strength of this play seems 
to me to lie in the first act and in the last, 
rather than in the third or climacteric, 
where one would expect it. The reasons 
for this are, briefly, as follows : In the 
first act the heroine stands out in sharp 
contrast to the surrounding characters ; 
in the other acts she moves in a social 
atmosphere common to them and to her. 
In the fourth act the interest is shifted 
from the " eternal femininity " which has 
thus far dominated the piece and of whose 
monotonous weakness one gets somewhat 
tired — the interest, I say, is shifted from 



SOMK MODERN PI.AYS 97 

this and is concentrated upon the struggle 
going on in the soul of a man — a man 
much injured, much wronged, whose 
sense of justice struggles against his love. 
In these acts also — the first and fourth — 
the element of suspense is skilfully intro- 
duced and is thoroughly well managed. 
In the other acts, with the exception of 
the ingeniousl}^ caused disappearance of 
the villain in Act II. there is nothing 
one could not foresee after listening to the 
opening speeches. 

As to the author's character- drawing, 
there is nothing calling for commendation 
outside of two minor personages, which 
owe their distinctiveness, perhaps, more 
to the skill of the actor than to that of the 
playwright. I refer to the characters of 
Jerry Blake, the miner, and Dr. McKer- 
row, the oculist, excellently rendered by 
Mr. T. C. Hamilton. 

On approaching now this question of 
rendition, I realize that it is a most deli- 
cate subject to handle. Protest as will the 
critic, the actor may very naturally see in 
a criticism of his acting a criticism of his 
personality where none is intended. Yet 
the true artist will welcome sincere criti- 
cism if he be convinced it comes from one 



98 IMPRESSIONS O^ 

who, like himself, is engaged in " a dis- 
interested endeavor to learn and propagate 
the best that is known and thought in the 
(dramatic) world." 

Nothing could be better than Miss 
Wainwright's appearance and acting in 
the first act. Here, it seems to me, she 
was at her best, and the reason for this 
is simple. The situation had a touch of 
romance in it and was therefore better 
suited to her than were those in any acts 
that followed. Nature has endowed her 
with an appearance and a voice that fit 
her for a very much higher and more 
poetical form of play than an Adeplhi 
melodrama. Her peculiar field is the same 
as that in which Miss Marlowe has won 
her reputation— the realm of what Cole- 
ridge, for lack of a better name, called 
the Romantic Drama, and of which such 
plays as Muck Ado and As You Like It 
are types. Such plays call for sensibility 
to poetic effects, lightness of touch, ease 
and grace of elocution. All of these 
qualities Miss Wainwright possesses, as 
those who have seen her Rosalind q2M well 
remember. In such plays and in high 
comedy, crude and violent emotions have 
little place ; now, crude and violent 



SOME MODERN PI,AYS 99 

emotions are the life and breath of 
melodrama. 

The art of Writing light opera has been 
practiced now for many years and experi- 
ence has plainly demonstrated that there 
are only two ways in which anything 
worth calling an artistic success can be 
achieved in this particular line of work. 
The first is to invent or discover a prob- 
able and entertaining plot wherein the 
incidents shall be properly motived and 
the characters shall so act and react upon 
each other that we shall have that clash 
and conflict of interests which are essential 
to a play : in other words, construct your 
dialogue as carefully as you would for a 
comedy, then give the whole a musical 
setting by inserting songs and choruses 
where they will least hinder the action. 
This is the French method, to the careful 
handling of which we owe such artistic 
gems as Olivette, Les Cloches de Corneville 
and Girofle-Girofla. The second method 
is to select some institution or fad or 
fashionable folly which you wish to satir- 
ize, turn into lyrical form your most 
humorous excogitations upon this basal 
theme and connect your lyrics as well as 



lOO IMPRESSIONS OF 

you can by means of dialogue, which by 
its wit shall atone for itslac^ of coherence. 
This is the common method in English 
operettas, and according to Mr. Gilbert's 
own confession it is the one which he 
employs. To it we ov^^e such happy satire 
upon ^stheticism as we find in Patience^ 
upon the Admiralty as we find in Pi7ia- 
fore, and upon the Army as we find in the 
Pirates of Penzance. 

I fear me that the author of The Sere- 
nade, as a good American, must have 
thought it unpatriotic to learn anything 
from the practice of such authors as 
Halevy and Gilbert, for his operetta has 
nothing that can be called a plot nor has 
it any basal or dominating idea. It con- 
sists merely of a series of happenings — to 
call them incidents were to use too digni- 
fied a word — which allow certain excel- 
lent singers to stroll upon the stage, 
sometimes singly, sometimes in twos and 
threes, and there to lift up their voices in 
tones so mellifluous that they happily 
cause us to forget the words. Should any 
one unreasonably desire to know the 
meaning of any of the things he sees 
a-happening on the stage he must per- 
force refer to his libretto, where he will 



SOMK MODKRN PIvAYS lOI 

find the stage business carefully explained 
— a most necessary precaution. He will 
look in vain for lyrics and will find instead 
a series of unrhythmical, prosy lines, 
printed in the form usually reserved for 
verse. Witness the following, a some- 
what favorable specimen : 

We can hear our own hearts beat 

With a loud pit-pattering. 
Knees together quaking meet, 

And our teeth are chattering. 
B-r-r-r-r. There's something there, 

Ambushed thieves observe us. 
B-r-r-r. To breathe we do not dare, 

We're extremely nervous. 
We may remark we are afraid 

And wish that we at home had stayed. 

Is it possible that these lines were writ- 
ten by any but a deaf man ? 

The only attempt at wit in The 
Serenade is a number of atrocious puns, 
and there is but one really humorous 
situation — that in which the Duke, in 
mad pursuit of the hated serenader, 
comes upon an entire chorus of monks 
singing that, to him, hateful melody. 
But this one humorous situation cannot 
save the rest of the opera from being 
deadly dull. 



I02 IMPRESSIONS 01^ 

The composer lias succeeded far better 
than his librettist. The Serenade itself, 
the Angelus song and the Dream song 
are charming bits of composition. 



II. 

A SECRET WARRANT. 

(Columbia Theatre ^ San Francisco ^ 
May, i8g8.) 



The only play of serious interest pre- 
sented during the past week was A Secret 
Warrayit, with Mr. Robert Mantell in the 
leading role. The method in which the 
play is worked out raises it a step above 
the melodrama ; yet this virtue is little 
more than negative. Of the common- 
place there is a depressing abundance : 
of the elevated which may redeem this 
commonplace there is but one element. 
This gains perhaps by contrast with the 
surrounding dreariness. 

The element to which I refer is the 
conception of the character of Marguerite 
Bertrand. This is thoroughly human, 
sympathetic and convincing. The girl's 
love for the first gallant man she meets, 
her entire forgetfulness of self where he 
is concerned, her unwilling belief in his 



I04 IMPRESSIONS OF 

apparent faithlessness, the crumbling of 
this belief at the touch of his hand — all 
this appeals, and rightly, to the common 
heart which has not lost its faith and love 
and hope. It is a thousand pities that 
the author who could conceive such a 
character had not imagination enough to 
set it forth in truly poetic form. You can 
see and feel what he is trying to do, and 
you wish that he could express it better. 
It is just as Thackeray said of The 
Stranger : "In the midst of the balder- 
dash [of expression] there runs that 
reality of love, children and forgiveness 
of wrong which wall be listened to 
wherever it is preached and sets all the 
world sympathizing." 

The first act is entirely lacking in sus- 
pensive interest. Long before the curtain 
falls you can foresee that the villain will 
insult the heroine, that the hero will 
return just in the nick of time and will 
knock him down. This is evident from 
the mechanical way in which the hero's 
exit is arranged : there is no reason for 
his going off when he does except that he 
must be off the stage before he can come 
on again to repulse the aforesaid villain. 
The second act is decidedly stronger and 



Some modern pi,ays 105 

is the best in the play ; it contains a 
charming love scene and an extremely 
effective climax. The third act falls 
away sadly ; the main situation has been 
used a thousand times, and the climax is 
so weak that the curtain seems to fall 
before the scene is completed. A touch 
of resistance here on the part of the hero 
w^ould have increased his danger, our 
sympathy for him and our corresponding 
joy at his final deliverance. The fourth 
act is too long. The one really good 
scene it contains — that of the lettre-de- 
cachet — to be effective should be intro- 
duced more quickly. 

In the comedy scene of the first act 
Miss Knott was disappointing. Thanks 
to the stage manager, I suppose, she 
played this in a manner that can be 
described only as "giggly" — a manner 
about as inappropriate to the piece and 
character as can be imagined. Through- 
out this act, also, she wore a Three- 
Little-Girls-From-School expression of 
pained surprise at everybody and every- 
thing which was entirely overdone. She 
reminded you of what Charles I,amb said 
of Munden : "He stands wondering, 
among the commonplace materials of life, 



io6 iM^RESsioiTS OP 

like primeval man with the sun and stars 
about him." In the emotional scenes of 
the later acts she showed decided 
improvement and a capacity for attaining 
real excellence in this line. Her faults 
are evidently due to bad teaching. If 
she aspire to be in the future anything 
more than she is to-day these faults must 
be remedied. They can be remedied by 
a year or two of hard work with some 
competent master in New York or Paris, 
and this is the only way in which they 
can be. Miss Julia Marlowe spent four 
years studying only six Shakespearian 
roles. Anybody who expects to rise, as 
she has done, must be as willing to learn 
as she was. 

Nature has gifted Mr. Mantell with a 
fine figure, an expressive countenance 
and a voice over which he has less 
control than the audience could wish. 
For declamatory and tempestuous pas- 
sages this voice is sufficient, but in 
passages that call for the expression of 
tenderness and pathos it is lacking in 
shading, in delicacy, in refinement. 
That so experienced an actor should be 
nervous seems almost incredible, yet in 
the first act his continual clutching at his 



SOME MODERN PI,AYS IO7 

blue ribbon indicated either nervousness 
or a mannerism that needs to be abated. 
In spite of these defects, in the scenes 
that call for serious and romantic action 
Mr. Mantell is effective — as effective, per- 
haps, as anyone on our stage to-day. It 
is in the comedy scenes that he fails, and 
fails woefully. This, too, not from any 
lack of intelligence, not from ignorance 
of what is the right thing to do, but 
from a deliberate attempt to play down 
(or, rather, up) to the gallery. This is 
especially noticeable and especially 
inartistic in the slipper scene of the first 
act ; — that an accomplished man of the 
world, a man seasoned by years of service 
in camp and court, should be agitated as 
a schoolboy and awkward as a rustic at 
the thought of putting on a lady's slipper 
— this is indeed incredible. 

"A second lover came ambling by — 
A timid lad with a frightened eye, 

And a color mantling highly ; 
He muttered the errand on which he'd come, 
Then only chuckled and bit his thumb, 

And simpered, simpered shyly." 

This was Mr. Mantell' s attitude. It 
raised a laugh both in the thinking and 
in the unthinking portions of the audi- 



loS IMPRKSSIOKS 01^ 

ence, but that which inspired the laugh 
was not the same in both cases. 

In the drinking scene of the last act Mr 
Mantell shows the same tendency to play 
down. There is some (but not sufficient) 
excuse for this here, as the action requires 
that De Beaumont should deceive De 
Varennes by pretending drunkenness. 
In this place Mr. Mantell would do well 
to change the action, which is not only 
stale and unnecessary, but even tends to 
weaken the scene. Since De Varennes 
is drunk and De Beaumont is not, the 
audience feels there is no credit for De 
Beaumont in vanquishing De Varennes 
in the duel : a sword contest between 
a drunken man and a sober one is too 
one-sided to be interesting. Let De 
Varennes be kept sober. This will 
remove any possible excuse for horse-play 
on the part of De Beaumont, and will, as 
I have said, strengthen the interest. 

The atmosphere of the play, in the two 
scenes just spoken of, was thus spoiled by 
Mr. Mantell. Among others who failed 
to preserve this atmosphere the chief 
sinner was Mr. Harry Saint Maur. This 
excellent comedian has so long repre- 
sented old men that are loudly humorous 



Some; modkrn pi, ays log 

that he seems unable to transform himself 
when called upon to play a character that 
that is quietly witty, or at least intended 
to be so. The author, I must confess, 
though his intention is evident, has not 
given Mr. Saint Maur much assistance. 
I suggest that with Mr. Mantell's permis- 
sion he strengthen his part by inserting 
a few really witty expressions such as he 
may easily cull from the maxims of La 
Rochefoucauld or the " Polite Conversa- 
tion " of Swift 

It is pleasant to recall that at least two 
members of the company did admirably 
preserve the tone of the play and of the 
characters they represented. These were 
Mr. Howard Hall as Gaston de Varennes, 
and Mr. Frank W. Smith as Phillippe, 
Due d' Orleans. The former was rollick- 
ing, dashing, yet always, even in his cups, 
the gentleman ; the latter was dignified, 
impressive, and bore himself most royally. 
Mr. Smith has a face and figure that 
would admirably fit hira to portray the 
character of General Washington. If ever 
the Father of His Country is put upon the 
stage successfully — and several attempts 
in this line have recently been made — 
Mr. Smith is the man to play the part. 



110 IMPRESSIONS OF 

With the exception of the costumes 
little attempt was made in this play, so far 
as I could see, to create an illusion that we 
were looking at a picture of life in the 
days of the Regency. Nineteenth century 
sofas stood out in bewildering contrast 
against I^ouis Quatorze walls, bringing 
home to the audience painful realization 
of a truth unnecessarily stated on the 
programme : that the furniture used was 
from a shop just around the corner. 
Fearful, too, was the English pronuncia- 
tion of some of the minor characters, and 
more fearful their French ! 

The avoidable defects pointed out in this 
representation make one realize the neces- 
sity of some such institution as I have 
before advocated and still advocate : an 
endowed theatre with a school attached, 
where the actor shall be trained for his 
profession as thoroughly as are the 
lawyer, the doctor, the college professor, 
for theirs. Until we have some such 
institution we can hardly hope for per- 
formances much more artistic than those 
uneven representations given us by 
Mr. Mantell's company — representations 
where good material is misguided and 
wasted through lack of intelligent training 
in the higher details of the actor's art. 



III. 

ROBIN HOOD. 

(San Francisco^ Marchy i8g8.) 



As I look over the playbills for this 
week (March 19-26), I find that one can 
choose only between two crude melo- 
dramas and two pieces written solely to 
amuse. Now amusement, though far 
from the highest, is certainly a legitimate 
end for the drama, and the amusement 
offered shall therefore be my theme. 

As to Robin Hood, to state the matter 
negatively, it may be said that one's 
enjoyment of this opera is greatly en- 
hanced by not reading the libretto ; 
positively, then, the chief interest lies in 
the music. 

Orchestration can be taught to anybody 
with a good ear and enough brains to re" 
member what he is taught ; but melody 
comes by nature and the grace of inspira- 
tion. Now Mr. de Koven is a born melo- 



Ii2 tMPRKSSIONS Oh' 

dist ; like the lover in Keats' '' Ode on a 
Grecian Urn," he is indeed a 

Happy melodist, unwearied, 
Forever piping songs — 

Alas ! that we cannot truthfully applj'- 
to his songs the closing words of Keats' 
line, — [songs] '' forever new." 

Robiji Hood is the one work in which 
Mr. De Koven seems to have given com- 
plete and beautiful expression to the 
musical thought within his soul. Every- 
thing that he wrote before Robin Hood is 
crude and juvenile; nearly everything 
that he has v/ritten since (in the w^ay of 
operatic music) is commonplace or repeti- 
tional. His one great success came to 
him too early in life ; it came, evidently, 
before he had realized the responsibility 
which rests upon that one man in a 
hundred million who possesses the divine 
gift of melodious expression. Such a talent 
should be sedulously nourished and 
sparingly used. It should be increased 
by assiduous study of the best models and 
should be strengthened by innumerable 
exercises v/hich should never reach the 
ear of the public. Only in this way can 
great results be attained. He who would 



SOME MODKRN PI.AYS II3 

share the fame of a Mozart or a Beethoven 
must model his practice upon theirs. 

Mr. De Koven has, unfortunately for 
his musical reputation, preferred money 
to fame. Had he given us but one opera 
every three or four years, each one of 
these might have been a masterpiece, as 
is Robin Hood. Instead of this, he has 
averaged at least one opera a year since 
1890 ; v^ho that has sat through the inan. 
ities of his Fencing Master and other 
tenth-rate work of that character, !but 
must regret the squandering of a talent 
v^ell worthy of being husbanded ! 

The popularity oi Robin Hood, then, is, 
in my opinion, due chiefly to the life and 
grace of its melodies ; yet there are minor 
elements in its phenomenal success which 
may be worth noticing. The theme and 
the setting are certainly well chosen. 
" Orsino, by Mr. Barrymore — What a full 
Skakespearian sound it carries!" says 
Charles lyamb. Similarly, what associa- 
tions of the merry greenwood and the 
jovial outlaws cling around the names of 
Robin Hood and Allan-a-Dale ! To the 
German or to the French element in our 
population this will hardly appeal, but to 



114 IMPRKSSIONS OP" 

all those in whose veius runs Saxon 
blood, to those whose youthful imagina- 
tions have been nourished upon ''Ivan- 
hoe," to those in whose ears echoes the 
sound of old ballads : 

When shaws beene sheene, and shradds full 
fay re, 

And leaves both large and longe, 
Itt is merrye walking in the fayre forrest 

To heare the small birdes songe. 

The woodwheele sang, and would not cease, 

Sitting upon the spraye, 
See lowde, he awakened Robin Hood, 

In the greenwood where he lay, — 

to all such the name of Robin Hood must 
ever be one to conjure with. 

The story and the characters here are 
so well-known to the audience beforehand 
that little invention is necessary to carry 
them along. The only character in which 
any originality is displayed is in that of 
the Sheriff, and what would that be with- 
out Mr. Barnabee ? A priori, it would 
seem impossible to extract any fun from 
the stale and vulgar device of represent- 
ing an old man as intoxicated, yet such is 
the skill of this delightful actor that one 
can really watch with interest the contrast 
between his self-suflScient wisdom and his 



SOME MODERN PLAYS II5 

foolish actions. It is only after you go 
home and think it all over that you regret 
that such skill should be displayed in so 
unworthy a situation. 

Nothing could better illustrate the dog- 
gerel which the public will endure in 
opera than the words of the famous intro- 
duced song, "Oh, Promise Me." Here 
is the first verse of this extraordinary 
farrago : 

Oh, promise me that some day you and I 

Will take our love together to some sky 
Where we can be alone, and faith renew, 

And find the hollows where those flowers 
grew. 
The first sweet violets of early spring, 

That come in whispers, fill our thoughts, 
And sing of love unspeakable that is to be. 

Oh, promise me, oh, promise me. 

Compare this with the treatment of the 
contrasting emotion by a great artist : 

Dear as remembered kisses after death. 
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd 
On lips that are for others ; deep as love. 
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ; 
O Death in Life, the days that are no more. 



IV. 

THE GEISHA— RIP VAN WINKLE 
(Opkra)— A GII.DED FOOL. 

{San Francisco, March, i8g8.) 



Why has the English-speaking race, 
which has accomplished so much in all 
forms of poetrj^ accomplished so little in 
the other fine arts of painting, sculpture 
and, above all, music ? Anything like a 
complete answer to this question would 
fill more pages than are contained in this 
book, yet a brief consideration of histori- 
cal causes may throw a little light upon 
the subject. 

Before the days of Puritan ascendancy 
the English and the Flemish schools of 
music were as strong and as original as 
any in Europe. In proof of this, for 
England suffice it to mention the names of 
Tallis, Byrd and Orlande Gibbons, all of 
whom died before 1626. The works of 
the first-mentioned still serve a« models 



some; mode:rn pi,ays 117 

for composers of church music, while the 
madrigals of B3'rd and Gibbons are hardly- 
surpassed by those of Sir Arthur Sullivan. 
The glorious summer of English music, 
which ended with the death of Gibbons 
in 1625, was followed by the cruel winter 
of Puritan discontent. Though the edu- 
cated among the Puritans, such as Milton 
and Cromwell, were able to disassociate 
music from its use with the service of the 
church, the great mass of the people were 
unable to do this ; to them, music meant 
ever ritual and liturgy. Now, ritual and 
liturgy they were determined to stamp 
out at any cost. And they did. 

In the second part of the seventeenth 
century we find but one great musical 
composer — Purcell. He died in 1695 ^^ 
the early age of thirty-seven and left no 
successors — for the vast majority of the 
nation was still Puritan and had no more 
love for music than it had for that brilliant 
and immoral Restoration comedy which 
drove the Puritan from the theatre. Under 
the early Planoverians matters were still 
worse ; the little patronage which music 
had received from the court was entirely 
withdrawn by monarchs who confessed 
themselves unable to see anything even 



1X8 IMPRESSIONS OF 

in ** bainting and boetry," as they phrased 
it, so that neither from the mass of the 
nation below nor from the ruling classes 
above could the unfortunate musician ex- 
pect anything but neglect and contempt. 
As Puritanism gradually lost force, and 
when musical taste began to revive in 
England, no native composers arose to 
supply the demand. English music 
became the thrall of German and Italian 
masters, and a thrall it has remained 
until very recently. The great mass of 
the English people have not yet awakened 
to the importance of music as a civilizing 
agency. Until they do England can 
hardly expect to develop a composer that 
shall be to her what Wagner is to Ger- 
many and Gounod to France. 

What is true of old England is true of 
new America. Our best music must long 
continue to come from France, Germany 
and Italy— for Dr. Damrosch's idea that 
a national American music may be de- 
veloped from negro melody seems to me 
worthy of being regarded as the joke of 
the century. 

The poverty of ideas which still charac- 
terizes English music is nowhere more 



SOMK MODERN PLAYS IIQ 

painfully apparent than in music written 
for the stage. Kugland has but one 
master in this line of work — Sir Arthur 
Sullivan — and the other composers try- 
to copy him. Witness that musical 
farce (not comedy), The Geisha. In this 
production we have a second-rate attempt 
to imitate Sullivan's manner, with an 
entire absence of that individuality which 
marks his work as unique. The com- 
poser seems capable of better things, but 
he has been compelled by the construc- 
tion of the farce to write a mere succession 
of ditties wherein the jingle and blare of 
the music hall are painfully apparent. 

In the libretto of The Geisha (happily 
not printed) we see the same imitative- 
ness which characterizes the music. Its 
prototype, of course, is Gilbert's MikadOy 
and the one distinct character in the play 
— the Marquis Imari — is a transcript of 
Poo-Bah, minus his wit. The one orig- 
inal conception in The Geisha is the 
introduction of foreign and native ele- 
ments into the same play. This gives a 
chance for picturesque contrasts in set- 
ting and costuming, and this chance is 
well utilized. 

Vulgarity is not a necessary concomit- 



120 IMPRKSSIONS OV' 

ant of comic opera, as Mr. Gilbert's 
practice abundantly shows. He has also 
demonstrated that witty and even poetical 
elements may be effectively introduced. 
Now TAe Geisha has neither wit nor 
poetry, but abounds in vulgarity. The 
depiction of Japanese life is bad enough, 
but its coarseness is partially concealed 
from the audience by their ignorance of 
Japanese morals and customs. When we 
come to the English side we are shown 
characters that are supposed to represent 
English ladies and gentlemen. But the 
gentlemen — officers in Her Majesty's 
navy — act and talk like fo' castle hands 
off on a spree ; while the heroine — 
wealthy and of good family—is endowed 
with the manners of a Spiers & Pond 
barmaid. Such a representation is bad 
art as well as bad morals. Sir Joseph 
Porter is intensely humorous, yet always 
a gentleman; I^ittle Buttercup, though 
only a bumboat woman, does not offend 
with the Billingsgate manners of the 
English heroine in The Geisha, 

He attempts a dangerous task who 
tries to do over again a thing already 
once well done. To such a risk have Mr. 



SOME MODERN PI.AYS 121 

Jordan and Mr. Barnabee exposed them- 
selves by oj0fering to the puplic another 
musical version of Rip Van Winkle. 
The music of the first named suffers by 
comparison with that of Planquette ; it is 
lacking in distinctiveness and melody, is 
full of repetitions and commonplace 
cadences that remind one of " Darling I 
am Growing Old " and other favorites of 
the organ-grinder. The libretto is even 
weaker and more pitiably amateurish 
than the music. It is — like to Mr. Clayton 
Hooper in The Rival Curates — the mildest 
thing a-going ; to write such a libretto 
the author must have gone through a 
course of training like unto Mr. Hooper's, 
who 

Lived on curds and whey, 
And daily sang their praises, 

And then he'd go and play 
With buttercups and daisies. 

As to Mr. Barnabee' s acting, it is no dis- 
courtesy to him to say that he is not a 
Jefferson. Neither is it his fault that he 
is left lying on the stage for twenty-five 
minutes, during which there is being 
performed music certainly well calculated 
to put him to sleep were he not already so. 
Mrs. Siddons during a shorter period of 



122 IMPRESSIONS OB^ 

enforced inactivity on the stage used to 
refresh herself from a pint of porter placed 
behind a (painted) rock conveniently low; 
let us hope that Mr. Barnabee's apparent 
slumber was soothed by liquid ministra- 
tions conveyed to him through some con- 
cealed piping, conveniently long. 

Mr. Belasco's attempt at the Alcazar to 
establish a permanent stock company in 
San Francisco is a step in the right direc- 
tion. It would be gratifying to see this 
attempt receive from the public a more 
generous support. Only by recognition 
of such efforts will the pernicious star 
system be discouraged, and in stock com- 
panies only, can the young actor acquire 
that varied experience which shall make 
him an artist. 

If we except Robin Hood— which, every- 
body by this time may be supposed to 
have seen — the Alcazar revival of Henry 
Guy Carleton's A Gilded Fool was the 
most enjoyable performance given at any 
San Francisco theatre last week. Here 
we had a play — a natural and probable 
story of human life presented by means of 
action and dialogue, through a series of 
properly motived incidents. Nothing in 



some: modern plays 123 

the play is irrational or improbable, which 
is more than can be said, I think, for the 
majority of plays one sees nowadays. 
Moreover, this play is actually based upon 
an idea and has a decided ethical ten- 
dency. Its purpose is to show how the 
nature of a man once strong and true but 
now weakened and warped by the acqui- 
sition of sudden wealth, may be restrength- 
ened and revivified by the touch of some 
ennobling emotion ; this emotion is love 
for a good woman. Innumerable poets 
and playwrights have treated this theme 
under different aspects — among others, 
Dryden most beautifully in his Cymon and 
Jphigenia. Mr. Carleton has given the 
subject a thoroughly modern setting and 
thus translated it into terms familiar to 
nineteenth century hearers. Wonderful 
to relate, also, he has managed to keep 
some of the poetic elements which 
many managers assure us that modern 
audiences will not tolerate. I was inter- 
ested to notice that no passages were 
listened to with more attention than those 
which, to use Ruskin's definition of 
poetry, suggested noble grounds for the 
noble emotions. 
The presentation of the play, though in 



124 IMPRESSIONS OF 

many ways excellent, was impaired by 
unduehasteand insuflficiency of rehearsal. 
This is unfortunately almost unavoidable 
at a house where a different play has to be 
presented every week in order to attract 
the public. Were the patronage better, 
were it as good as it should be in a city of 
the size of San Francisco, such a play as 
A Gilded Fool could run two — perhaps 
three — weeks. This would give time for 
iSfteen or twenty rehearsals of the next 
play, and these would be none too many. 
At the Comedie Frangaise twenty-five or 
thirty rehearsals are common, and forty 
or fifty are not unknown. The result is 
a finish and a perfection in detail which 
can be appreciated only when seen. 

Mr. Pascoe, Mr. Huntington and Mr. 
Bryant are all excellent actors. Were 
they but allowed time fully to prepare 
their work they would fill every require- 
ment which the spectator may reasonably 
demand from members of a stock com- 
pany. 



V. 

THE CAT AND THE CHERUB- 

THE FIRST BORN— A GAY 

DECEIVER. 

{Sa7i Fra7idsco, ApriU i8g8.) 



The appearance of The Cat ajid The 
Cherub at the Baldwin may properly mark 
the close of one of the most exciting and 
most amusing controversies in the history 
of the American drama. The pother all 
started in San Francisco; in San Fran- 
cisco, with dramatic propriety, it ends. 
Now that the fuss is all over, now that 
the clouds of dust raised by the friends ot 
Mr. Fernald and of Mr. Powers have been 
nearly blown away, now it may be possible 
to get a clear view of the situation and to 
draw up a last and impartial report upon 
this famous battle of authors and man- 
agers. 

Mr. Fernald' s stories of Chinese life 
had been published in New York and had 
been well known in San Francisco many 



126 IMPRESSIONS OF 

montlis before The First Born had its first 
rehearsal. A priori^ it seems impossible 
that a California author contemplating a 
play upon a Chinese subject should have 
failed to acquaint himself with these vivid 
sketches. When we come to examine the 
elements of Mr. Powers' play we find that 
many of them are the same as those in 
Mr. Fernald's stories. Just as the theme 
of Othello is jealousy and of Macbeth 
ambition, so the theme of The First Bom 
is parental affection. Now, this is also 
the theme in the narrative version of The 
Cata7idThe Cherub. The adventure which 
befell Hoo Chee could never have befallen 
him had it not been for the situation in 
which he was placed by the jealous love 
of his father. The plot of The First Born 
turns upon exactly the same motive. 
Coming to characters, we find other 
resemblances between The First Bor?i and 
the Fernald stories. The learned doctor, 
the amah, the pipe-smoking murderer 
and the highbinders are in both ; like- 
wise the enmity of the clans, which 
furnishes much of the action of The First 
Born, appears in the stories. The pathetic 
episode of the slave girl is original with 
The First Bor7t, and for this Mr. Powers 



some; modern pi,ays 127 

is entitled to full credit, but for the other 
characters, for much of the action and for 
the color and atmosphere of his play, it 
seems to me, he is indeoted to Mr. Fer- 
nald's book. 

Had this acknowledgment been made 
at the first there need have been no contro- 
versy, no charges of plagiarism, no recrim- 
inations, and after this acknowledgment 
there would still have remained large 
praise for Mr. Powers. His originality 
consists in this : he was the first to per- 
ceive and actually to put into theatrical 
shape the dramatic possibilities of the life 
depicted in The Cataiid The Cherub stones. 
So far as we can judge from the known 
facts, Mr. Fern aid did not perceive the 
dramatic possibilities in his own narrative 
work until the success of Mr. Powers' 
play had demonstrated them to him. 
When these were brought to his notice 
we can hardly blame him for wishing to 
dramatize his own book. Our only regret 
is that he should have descended into the 
arena of music-hall politics, allowing his 
manager to exploit his play by unworthy 
dodges and tricks of the trade. If The 
Cat and The Cherub is a better play than 
The First Born it does not need to fear 



128 IMPRESSIONS OF 

its rival : these mountings in hot haste, 
these hurryings to and fro will not make 
it a better play ; they simply tend to keep 
away from the representations people who 
thiak that one of the essentials of the best 
dramatic art is dignity. 

Is The Cat and The Cherub a better play 
than The First Born ? To this I answer 
No; and my reasons are briefly as follows: 
The action of The Cat a^id The Cherub is 
slow ; the action of The First Born is 
rapid ; the dialogue of The Cat and The 
Cherub abounds in monologues, while 
that of The First Born is well broken and 
distributed. In The Cat and The Cherub 
there are really two stories between which 
the interest of the audience is divided ; in 
The First Born this interest is centered 
and unified about one theme, and one 
only. The climacteric situation (which 
is the same in both plays) in The Cat and 
The Cherub is treated with tedious lengthi- 
ness ; in The First Born this same situa- 
tion comes with the force, vividness and 
unexpectedness of lightning-stroke from 
summer sky. 

The treatment of this last point is an- 
other illustration of a fact familiar to any 
one acquainted with stagecraft, namely, 



SOMK MODERN PI,AYS 1 29 

that a man may write a very good narra- 
tive and be much less competent to put it 
into dramatic form than a man who could 
never have written the narrative but who 
has stage experience. Macready could 
never have written Richelieu^ hni Richelieu 
would never have been a successful play 
had not Macready been consulted at every 
important turn in its construction. Mr. 
Paul Potter could never have written 
Trilby, but he has put it into excellent 
dramatic shape. Similarly, Mr. Powers 
has done nothing to make us believe that 
he could write such charming narrative 
sketches as we find in Mr. Fernald's book, 
but his experience as an actor has enabled 
him to make a much better play out of 
this same book. 

There is a belief current among people 
who cannot carefully have studied the facts 
that there is something in the actor's pro- 
fession which militates against his being 
a good playwright. Among others, my 
friend Mr. Birrell holds this view and 
asks some one to point out what actor 
has ever enriched the literature of his own 
profession. To this I would reply, first, 
that Shakespeare was an actor, and that 
one reason why he wrote such good plays 



was that lie liad learned on the boards 
the technique of his trade; second, it was 
exactly the same with Moliere. Farquhar 
was an actor before he was a playwright; 
so were Garrick, Foote and Pinero. This 
is a very respectable list of names. Some 
of these men combined acting and play- 
writing as long as they lived, and if others 
abandoned the former for the latter, it 
was not because the first-mentioned art 
unfitted them for the second, but simply 
because they found they had more talent 
for the second than for the first. 

This knowledge of stagecraft must 
be acquired somehow. Congreve learned 
it second-hand from Dryden, Goldsmith 
from Garrick, Sheridan from his father 
(an actor). Kach one of these writers 
would have learned it quicker and better 
from his own observation on the stage. 
This is where Mr. Powers has learned it; 
Mr. Fernald has yet to learn it — and I 
believe he will. 

When we come to rendition, Mr Fer- 
nald' s play suffers by comparison with 
Mr. Powers'. The actors in the former, 
excellently as they had acquitted them- 
selves in the preceding farce, failed to 
adapt themselves to the tone and atmos- 



SOMK MODSRi^ PXAYS ijf 

phere of a Chinese play. In seeking for 
dignity they became cold and stilted ; in 
bearing, gesture and manner they lacked 
verisimilitude. With the exception of 
Mr. Holland and Miss Deane, it was 
impossible to imagine that we saw upon 
the stage Chinese men and women. They 
were too evidently foreigners masquerad- 
ing in Chinese garments. In the First 
Born the illusion was complete. Miss 
Buckley, Mr. Benreimo and Mr. Osborne 
sunk their personalities absolutely in the 
characters they represented. 

Another circumstance unfortunate for 
Mr. Fernald is the position of his play on 
the programme. By half-past lo people 
are tired ; moreover, two hours spent in 
the atmosphere of the vaudeville and the 
cafi chayitant leave one in anything but 
the proper frame of mind for tragedy. 

As to this same preceding farce, A Gay 
Deceiver^ it is excellently played and 
abominably written. In modern plays of 
a light order it is too often the case that 
the actor, by his interpolations and busi- 
ness, degrades the author; in this play 
the reverse is the case; the authors 
degrade the actor. 



i$i IMPRESSIONS OF 

The theme of the play holds up to ridi- 
cule an institution which it has taken the 
human race thousands of years to establish 
on anything like a stable foundation. 
This institution is the most valuable 
which any society can possess. It is the 
corner-stone upon which rest all decent 
social relations. If this corner-stone were 
destroyed modern society would rush 
headlong to ruin and would crumble into 
a state of primitive anarchy. This insti- 
tution is marriage; upon this rests the 
home, the family and the legitimate in- 
heritance of property. To her insistence 
upon the sancitity of this institution 
ancient Rome owed much of her stability 
and much of her greatness. History 
shows very plainly that the society in 
which this institution has become a pub- 
lic jest is in a perilous condition. Such 
was society in the time of Charles II ; 
such was society in the time of Louis XV; 
such is the society depicted in A Gay 
Deceiver. The men are all rakes and liars; 
the women are all shameless and vicious 
except the wife who is represented as a 
fool ; the authors heap the ridicule upon 
her — the only woman in the play with 
any pretension to virtue — and do their 



some; modern pi,ays 133 

best to excite your sympathy for her 
husband, the arch-rake and the arch-liar. 
The latter's speech invoking the " mem- 
ory of our sainted mother " is a slur upon 
a feeling which honorable men hold most 
sacred, and is an insult to every honest 
woman in the audience. 

For these reasons I say the play is 
thoroughly immoral and is a disgrace to 
the stage. 

I am informed on what I believe to be 
good authority that the play above de- 
scribed is an adaptation from the French, 
although there is nothing on the bill to 
show it. If this be so one may pertin- 
ently ask why (as in this case) American 
audiences will so often accept the off- 
scourings of Parisian gutters, and will 
so seldom ask for the roses that grow in 
the gardens of fair France. French 
society, like every other society, contains 
bad elements, but it is an injustice to 
the French people to transfer to a foreign 
stage innumerable representations of 
those elements and to leave almost un- 
represented those better elements reflected 
in the works of the great French dra- 
matic writers. Paris has several theatres 
where such a play as A Gay Deceiver 



1J4 tMPRBJgSIO]^'^ 0^ 

might have been running, say, during 
the first week of March ; but she has 
also a Comddie Frangaise and an Odeon 
where during that same week one could 
see the following plays : At the Fran- 
gaise — Moliere's Le Mariage Force, and 
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Dumas' 
V Etrang'tre ; at the Odeon — U Aries- 
ienne (from Daudet's Neuma ,Rou- 
mestan) and La Fille du Cid. If The 
Cat and The Cherub needed a French 
prologue, why not give us something 
good rather than something vile ? some- 
thing elevating rather than something 
debasing ? To use a Carylese metaphor : 
Is it believed that San Francisco has 
erected within her borders some huge 
signpost whereon is inscribed in letters 
so large that he who runs may read, 
^ 'DRY RUBBISH SHOT HKRK?" 



VI. 
SHORE ACRES. 

{Sa7i Frayicisco, April ^ i8g8.) 



After all the foreign rubbisli which has 
been shot upon our stage, it is refreshing 
to find a really good play upon an Amer- 
ican subject, written by an American, 
excellently played by Americans in good 
United States suitable to the time and 
place of the action, and staged with a 
perfection of detail that would reflect 
credit upon any French or German pro- 
duction. Such a play is Shore Acres. 
If Mr. Augustin Daly and other high- 
toned individuals who think no production 
worth staging unless it has first received 
the stamp of London or Berlin approval, 
could give us anything as good as Shore 
Acres, their audiences would feel they had 
received full value for the two dollars 
extracted from oft-befooled pockets. 

The main theme of the play is the 
devotion of a simple-minded New Eng- 



l^b IMPRESSIONS OP 

land farmer to a wonian who is worthy 
and a brother who is unworthy of his 
love. In early life he had sacrificed his 
love for the woman in order that his 
brother might marry her. As an old 
man this long pent-up devotion flowed 
forth in a stream of blessing upon her 
children, and upon one of these (a girl) 
in particular. At the time the play opens 
she is supposed to be about eighteen. 
Her love story and the complications 
arising therefrom form the secondary 
theme or sub-plot. This, it will be seen, 
is thus organically connected with the 
main plot ; each would be incomplete 
without the other. They are fitted to- 
gether, it must be confessed, by the hand 
of a most skilful workman. 

The first act and the third are, in 
my opinion, stronger than either the 
second or the fourth. The first contains an 
intellectual element lacking in the others. 
Its presentation of the narrow, provincial, 
country life of New England stands out 
in fine dramatic contrast with the wider, 
freer range of thought and feeling sug- 
gested by the mental tone of the young 
physician. The utter impossibility of 
life for him in a community whose most 



some: modern PI.AYS 1 37 

advanced thinker believes that Darwinism 
means that his grandfathers were monk- 
eys ; the hopeless attempt of the young 
scientist to adapt himself to such an 
environment ; the faith of the young girl 
who longs to believe in the new ideas 
because he believes in them — all this 
furnishes a most interesting psychological 
problem, thoroughly modern and treated 
in a thoroughly modern way. This alone 
would serve to lift the play from the dead 
level of that ordinary nineteenth-century 
drama, which might be fittingly described 
in words I once heard applied to William 
Black's "Strange Adventures of a House 
Boat:" "Just the thing for a summer 
holiday ; not an idea in it." 

In the third act, to a good many people 
in the audience the strength seemed to 
lie in the spectacle of the painted ship 
upon the painted ocean. This bit of 
melodrama, it seemed to me, was out of 
keeping with the tone of the rest of the 
piece. It was really in the preceding 
scene of the same act that we had the 
most powerful situation in the whole 
play. Here was the real climax. Here 
we were shown, swiftly and vividly, the 
true nobility, the dauntless purpose 



138 IMPRESSIONS O^ 

which lay deep hidden in a nature 
apparently soft and sympathetic. 

The fourth act — that terror to every 
dramatic writer, however skilful — opens 
delightfully in Mr. Heme's play with the 
episode of the children's Christmas Eve. 
It falls away as soon as the main action is 
taken up again and threatens to end in a 
perfectly mechanical resolution ; it is 
saved, however, by one of those silent 
closes — so dangerous to attempt — so effec- 
tive when successful, and never in my 
experience more effectively employed 
than here. 

Turning now to rendition, I can hardly 
imagine how the principal part could 
have been played better than it was by 
Mr. Heme. Voice, gesture, bearing, — all 
were perfectly fitted to the character. 
Nobody in the audience could fail to hear 
every word he said, and when he did not 
speak his facial expression spoke clearer 
than words. Only in one incident during 
the long time he was on the stage did he 
fail, and that was in the struggle with 
his brother in the lighthouse. In a phy- 
sical contest on the stage there should be 
enough action displayed by both com- 
batants to create an illusion in the mind 



SOME MODERN PI,AYS 1 39 

of the audience that what they see is 
actually a fight. Now, Mr. Fisher, who 
plays Martin Berry, is a big, strong man 
weighing over 200 pounds. Such a man 
with murder in his heart is not to be 
thrust aside by a blow that would hardly 
have budged a ten-year-old boy. The 
blow which Mr. Heme gave him in this 
terrific encounter would, scarce have 
felled a six weeks' lamb. Therefore, 
when the audience should have been 
roused to terror and admiration, they 
were merely shaken by a very different 
emotion. 

Next to Mr. Heme, or rather on a level 
with him, must I place the work of Mr. 
James T. Galloway as Joel Gates. Mr. 
Galloway plays the eccentric old man in 
a manner worthy of the best traditions of 
the French stage . Mezieres himself could 
have taught him nothing. 

The other minor parts are all admirably 
done, showing a thoroughness and an 
intelligence on the part of the stage 
manager (Mr. Heme himself) which is 
as rare as it is delightful. Here must be 
mentioned the clever work of the children, 
most of which, I suppose, must be as- 
cribed to the same intelligent direction. 



I40 IMPRESSIONS OF 

Shore Acres and Little Lord Fatmtleroy 
are among the few plays I know of where 
the author's treatment of the child 
element is unobjectionable. In most 
plays (such as in that quintessence of 
vulgarity, The Geisha), the author en- 
deavors to get a striking eflfect by repre- 
senting the child as endowed with the 
'' smartness" of a vicious man. An 
effect is thus obtained, but it is not really 
humorous or entertaining ; it is rather 
pitiable and disgusting to see the fresh 
child-life thus polluted. This, the com- 
mon type of stage-child, has been satirized 
by Mr. Gilbert in his ballad of ''The 
Precocious Baby," who 

Early determined to marry and wive 

For better or worse 

With his elderly nurse, 
Which the poor little boy didn't live to contrive. 

His health didn't thrive — 

No longer alive, 
He died an enfeebled old dotard at five! 

Do we call this description satiric ? No; 
it seems rather the model according to 
which many authors have fashioned 
their conceptions of stage children. 
While there is nothing of this kind in 
Shore Acres, while the child life there is 



SOMK MODKRN PI.AYS 14I 

really innocent and delightful, the ques- 
tion still remains whether it is good for 
the children themselves ; whether it is 
right to subject any child to the late 
hours, constant traveling, and irreg- 
ular habits which are the necessary 
drawbacks of the actor's life. In the 
growing frame of the child nature is ever 
working m3^sterious and subtle changes ; 
she is making mighty draughts upon the 
vitality of the little organism. To place 
the child in those conditions which shall 
be most favorable to the growth and de- 
velopment of this organism is the first 
duty of those responsible for the child's 
existence. Now these favorable condi- 
tions cannot be obtained for a child 
whose life is on the stage, and for this 
reason the child had better not be there. 
If we must sacrifice something, it were 
better to sacrifice a passing effect in a 
play rather than the individual good of 
the young life. 

The least pleasant thing to be said 
about this play I have reserved till the 
last, and were it a defect necessarily 
inherent and irremovable, I should place 
very little emphasis upon it. But Shore 
Acres is such a good play that it ought to 



142 IMPRESSIONS OF 

be perfected in every detail possible, and 
the defect to which I refer can easily be 
remedied — from the front of the house it 
is so palpable, that it is passing strange 
it should have escaped the watchful eye 
of Mr. Heme upon the stage. I fear me 
that eye has been sicklied o'er with the 
pale cast of parental thought, for it can- 
not see what anyone else can see, that the 
cast of Shore Acres would be greatly 
improved by engaging a leading lady. 
The company as at present constituted 
has none. Miss Julie Heme makes an 
attempt at the part of Helen Berry, but 
it is only an attempt, and not a successful 
one. Owing to her youth and inexperi- 
ence, or possibly to her embarrassment, 
she has not yet learned the art of standing 
gracefully upon the stage or of walking 
gracefully across it. In the earlier and 
quieter scenes of the play she was too 
slow and too drawling for even a country 
girl ; in the later and more highly emo- 
tional scenes she failed to rise to the level 
which the situations called for. In a 
minor part Miss Heme would doubtless 
acquit herself creditably. With four or 
five more years' experience she may make 
a good leading lady. In her present role 



SOME MODERN PLAYS I43 

she has been placed in the false position 
of attempting a part beyond her years 
and present capacity. If we be told 
that the awkward pose and ungraceful 
walk are a part of the character, to this 
I reply that this is realism run mad and 
degenerating into detailism, or mere 
photograph] sm. Photographism is slavish 
imitation of nature, and as such is not 
art. Art selects for emphasis from a 
multiplicity of details only those which 
are congruous with the situation in which 
the character is placed. The situation of 
Helen Berry requires that she inspire 
with love a man of taste and of refined 
feeling : — such a man could never love a 
girl whose pose is awkward and whose 
walk is ungraceful. If, therefore, Mr. 
Heme has deliberately taught the young 
lady these mannerisms I hope he will 
unteach her as quickly as possible, for I 
can assure him that the effect is anything 
but artistic. 

Although Mr. Heme was for two 
years stage manager at the Baldwin 
Theatre, and although he has often 
visited California, neither he nor his 
work are as well known here as they 



144 IMPRKSSIONS OF 

should be. Those who wish to know 
something of his life in the old stock 
days should read his entertaining auto- 
biography in the "Arena," Vol. VI, 
page 401 ; those who would like to know 
how Shore Acres came to be written 
should read his article in the same maga- 
zine, Vol. XV, page 61. I quote the 
concluding paragraph of the last-named 
article and rejoice to find it placing Mr. 
Heme on the side of those who have at 
heart the best interests of the theatre: 

''It is generally held," writes Mr. 
Heme, " that the province of the drama 
is to amuse. I claim that it has a higher 
purpose — that its mission is to interest 
and instruct. It should not preach 
objectively, but it should teach subjec- 
tively ; and so I stand for truth in the 
drama, because it is elemental, it gets to 
the bottom of a question. It strikes at 
unequal standards and unjust systems. 
It is as unyielding as it is honest. It is 
as tender as it is flexible. It has supreme 
faith in man. It believes that that which 
was good in the beginning cannot be bad 
at the end. It sets forth clearly that the 
concern of one is the concern of all. It 
stands for the higher development and 
thus for the individual liberty of the 
human race." 



VII. 

TRILBY— THE PURSER. 

{San Francisco^ May^ i8g8.) 



In turning a novel into a play it is by- 
no means important that the dramatizer 
should follow closely the details of the 
story. Indeed, it is seldom that he can 
profitably do so. All that the story can 
furnish him is a setting — a main incident 
upon which the plot revolves and sugges- 
tions for the principal characters. The 
minor incidents, the order in which these 
shall follow one another, the subordinate 
characters, the climaxes, the dramatic 
distribution of dialogue, the hints that 
prepare the audience for actions to follow, 
the dhiouemejit and the best method of 
closing the play — all these must be 
worked up by the dramatizer with very 
little aid from the narrative. His task is 
fully as difiScult as that of the author of 
the book — perhaps more so. As epic and 
dramatic faculty are seldom found in the 
same mind, there has grown up gradually 



I46 IMPRESSIONS OP 

a custom of collaboration in play- writing, 
where one author furnishes the setting, 
the main action and characters and the 
other author the other details mentioned 
above. In France, where the art of play- 
writing has been carried further than in 
any other country, collaboration is the 
rule and single authorship the exception. 
To collaboration we owe in French such 
masterpieces as Le Gendre de M. Poiriet 
and Madame Sans Gene. In English we 
owe to collaboration the two most success- 
ful plays of the last decade — ThePriso7ier 
of Zenda and Trilby. 

Mr. Potter's dramatization of this 
famous story is now so well known that 
to point out the details of his method of 
construction would be indeed a work of 
supererogation : all I shall attempt to do, 
then, is to touch upon a few points which 
have not been brought forward promin- 
ently in any criticism that I have seen. 

Mr. Frawley has a theory that what 
the public wants in plays just now is 
something that centers about a young and 
lovely woman, and this theory Mr. Potter 
has evidently worked upon in the open- 
ing lines of the first act of Trilby. The 
friendship between The Three Musketeers 



SOME MODERN PI<AYS I47 

of the Bncshi which in the book is fully as 
important and interesting as anything 
else, in the play is entirely subordinated 
to incidents based upon the young-and- 
lovely-woman-theory. This is somewhat 
of a shock to those who come to the play 
with the book fresh in mind; but before 
the play is ended you feel that in this case, 
at least, Mr. Frawley and Mr. Potter are 
right, both dramatically and from the box- 
oflSce point of view. The interest excited 
in the young and lovely woman is never 
allowed to flag ; it is consistently main- 
tained through the four acts and ceases 
only when the curtain falls for the last 
time. In this respect the play is a model 
of construction. 

The climax of each act is carefully led 
up to and is thoroughly effective, with the 
exception of the first. This is forced and 
miserably weak. lyittle Billee, shocked 
at Trilby's conduct, has strenuously 
resisted all entreaties of friends to stay in 
Paris and see her again. He leaves for 
Florence. He suddenly returns. But 
there is no reason for his returning, which 
did not exist before he left. His return 
is therefore unexplainable and is left un- 
explained. This is a dramatic absurdity, 



148 IMPRESSIONS 01^ 

and one, moreover, that could easily have 
been avoided. Some accident, some stroke 
of fate might have been inserted to bring 
him back unexpectedly. The act could 
then have closed logically with a strong 
scene between him and Trilby, in which 
his love shall conquer his sense of duty. 

The tableau which closes the last act is 
conceived and arranged with excellent 
taste. It would have been so easy and so 
entirely in accordance with stage tradi- 
tions to spoil this by bringing on again 
the principal male characters of the play. 
Not to have done so, not to have broken 
in upon the sanctity of Trilby's death by 
the introduction of any but a woman 
friend, this is indeed a beautiful and poetic 
touch that thrills the heart. 

Trilby would be a more pathetic and 
more human story if the hypnotic ele- 
ment were entirely omitted. Even the 
greatest masters of dramatic art have sel- 
dom succeeded in making credible the 
supersensuous. In Cymbeline, the appari- 
tion of Sicilius, the ghosts, and Jupiter 
upon an eagle are not credible ; the ghost 
in Hamlet is barely credible ; the witches 
in Macbeth are credible, but only because 
they are half human. Where Shakes- 



SOME MODKRN PI. AYS 1 49 

peare has all but failed, we can hardly 
expect Mr. Potter to succeed. And he 
has not. Even in the book the hypnotic 
part of the story is weak and unnecessary. 
When put upon the stage its falsity comes 
out in glaring colors. Not even Mr. 
Paulding's art, admirable as it is, can 
tone it down to such shades as we may 
see in nature. 

Mr. Potter has been careful to inform 
the public that he scorned delights and 
lived laborious days while reading pon- 
derous tomes on hypnotism in order that 
he might present the phenomena thereof 
in truly scientific form. These days and 
nights, my Paul, were wasted. Your 
presentation of hypnotism might be worth 
a two-inch notice in the "Journal of the 
Society for Psychical Research"; but, 
scientifically, there is nothing in it, and 
dramatically, it verges on the farcical. 

No one who has noticed the salacious 
turn given by Mr. Potter to the character 
of the Rev. Thomas Bagot need have 
been surprised at the outrageous tone of 
his last play, The Conquerors (happily a 
failure in London, by the way). There 
is nothing in Du Maurier's book to sug- 
gest what Mr. Potter shows us. Its 



150 IMPRKSSIONS OF 

introduction ruins the pure and whole- 
some tone of an otherwise pathetic scene, 
and all that is gained is an occasional 
cheap laugh from the lowest element in 
the house. I have met a great many 
Knglish clergymen : none of them have 
ever shown the slightest resemblance to 
the creature conjured up by Mr. Potter's 
loathsome imagination. Mr. Charters 
did his best to soften the representation 
of the character, and for this he is en- 
titled to the thanks of the audience. 

Mr. Paulding's Svengali was an ad- 
mirable piece of work. The character 
in itself is coarse and disagreeable ; the 
only way in which it can be lifted from 
its low plane on to a level with the sym- 
pathy of the audience is by emphasizing 
the intellectual element — the sole redeem- 
ing feature in Svengali. This, Mr. 
lyackaye was never able to do. His ren- 
dition invariably made too prominent 
the baser side of the man. His death 
scene, in particular, was a piece of de- 
basing realism quite as bad in its way as 
Hardy's description of the pig-killing in 
'*Jude, the Obscure." Mr. Paulding 
makes this horrible scene less horrible,and 
throughout surrounds the character with 



SOMK MODKRN PI^AYS I5I 

an atmosphere of intellectuality through 
the medium of which we can suffer our- 
selves to gaze with interest upon a crea- 
tion otherwise unendurable. 

Miss Gillette is certainly the best 
Trilby I have ever seen. In tenderness, 
in grace, in strong yet artistically re- 
strained emotion, she was decidedly 
superior to the best Trilby who has yet 
appeared on this coast. 

The support was about evenly divided 
between good and indifferent. Among 
the good we must class the delightful 
Mme. Vinard of Miss Phosa McAllister, 
and the Gecko of Mr. Frank Clayton, — an 
excellent local actor of whom we have 
seen too little. Among the indifferent 
must come the three painters, all of 
whom, and especially I^ittle Billee, were 
overweighted with their parts. The stage 
management was good and reflects credit 
upon Mr. George I^ask. 

In spite of some deficiencies, then, the 
performance on the whole was enjoyable. 
That a hastily collected local company 
can so creditably represent so difficult a 
play, is only another proof of what I 
have long firmly believed — that San 
Francisco is quite capable of producing 



152 IMPRESSIONS OF 

in good shape, any play in the English 
language, and that the sooner we assert 
our independence and rally to the support 
of a good stock company, the better it 
will be for actors, audience and managers. 

During the long years which Mr. Hart- 
man was compelled to waste in stupid 
burlesque at the Tivoli, many who 
watched him must have felt that he had 
capacity to become something more than 
a mere caricaturist ; that, given the 
opportunity, he would prove himself an 
actor. Kven in those dreary years, on 
the rare occasions when opportunity was 
offered him, he justified this belief by the 
manner in which he played such roles as 
that of Rip Van Winkle, of the Happy 
Father in Girofle-Girofla, and of Gaspard 
in Les Cloches de Corneville. This last- 
mentioned part he was even able to invest 
with a tragic dignity which delighted 
but did not surprise those who had 
followed his career. 

Mr. Hartman has now to be congratu- 
lated upon having taken the first step 
upon a path which shall lead him to a 
temple of more permanent fame than he 
could ever have hoped to reach as a 



some; modkrn pi, ays 153 

player of burlesque. The Purser is not 
a remarkable play in any way, but it 
does contain some portrayal of human 
nature and gives Mr. Hartman a mild 
chance to display his excellent talent for 
representing the humorous side of things. 
Let us hope that his next play will be not 
less humorous, and will contain at 
least a trace of that intellectual interest 
which is the only guarantee of perman- 
ent success and an abiding reputation. 

The stage effects in 7^^ A^^'^^r are thor- 
oughly artistic, and there is some origin- 
ality in the one really humorous scene of 
the play, that in which Mrs. Stanley is as 
fully convinced that Miss Somers is mad, 
as is Miss Somers that Mrs. Stanley is 
mad. How clever, too, was the acting 
of Miss Merville in this scene! The 
humorous portrayal of a woman's irra- 
tional fright could no further go. 



VIII. 
NIOBE— IN OLD JAPAN. 

{San Francisco, May^ i8g8.) 



No less an authority than Moliere has 
assured us, that he who undertakes to 
make intelligent people laugh, under- 
takes a difficult task. A single stroke of 
humor, a single flash of wit, may be 
compassed at times even by ordinary 
people, but to be humorous or witty 
through a long narrative or play — and 
this is what Moliere is referring to— this 
is indeed a task to be approached with 
fear and with trembling. 

Now the process of being humorous, 
like every other mental process, is cap- 
able of being analyzed partially, if not 
with entire satisfaction. To go back to first 
principles, to the man of primitive times 
(represented by the savage of to-day) noth- 
ing is humorous. Everything about him is 
entirely so inexplicable by his weak facul- 
ties, that one phenomenon is to him 
hardly more inexplicable than an- 



SOMK MODKRN PI,AYS 1$$ 

Other. Things that impress the civilized 
man as strange and incongruous, to the 
savage are neither strange nor incongru- 
ous, except so far as everything is so. 
As time — say a few tens of thousands of 
years — rolls rapidly on, man acquires, by 
bitter experience, the conceptions of cause 
and eflfect, of similarity, and dissimilarity, 
of congruity and incongruity. These 
conceptions are forced upon him by the 
study of nature and gradually they 
become hereditary in the race ; for every 
effect the mind of man now instinctively 
demands an adequate cause ; it expects 
that where within its experience certain 
effects have invariably followed certain 
causes, these effects will never appear 
without the precedent, adequate causes. 
On those occasions where the effect 
appears as the result of some cause not 
ordinarily associated with it, or when it 
appears apparently without cause — then, 
the mind, expecting one thing and 
getting another, receives a jar or shake 
of surprise ; the physiological expres- 
sion of this mental state is the nervo- 
muscular phenomenon known as laughter. 
To state it paradoxically, the ultimate 
aim and object, then, of a man who 



156 IMPRESSIONS OP 

sets out to write a humorous play, 
is to produce, through the mental, this 
physiological phenomenon. This physio- 
logical phenomenon is pleasurable, or 
people would not pay 50 cents or $1 to ex- 
perience it ; on this psychologico-hedon- 
istic-physiological phenomenon, then, 
rest the very existence and possibility of 
the Alcazar Theatre and of the excellent 
little company connected therewith. If 
this statement come with a shock of sur- 
prise to the energetic manager, I can say 
only that this very fact is another proof 
of the theory of the humorous here 
expounded. 

If one ask the subtler question, why 
does the mental state above described 
manifest itself in the contraction of cer- 
tain face and chest muscles, and not of 
others ? to this I would say that although 
it is incomprehensible to us how nervous 
energy should generate feeling or vice 
versa, yet it is indubitable that there is a 
bond of connection between them. Emo- 
tion translates itself into nervous energy 
and nervous energy discharges itself 
(among other channels) through the 
muscles ; why, in this particular case 
through particular muscles were too long 



SOME MODERN PI^AYS. I57 

here to be expounded. Those curious in 
such matters may find it clearly set forth 
in Mr. Herbert Spencer's essay on *'The 
Physiology of Laughter." 

MaiSy reve?ions. Granting the incon- 
gruous as the largest (though not the 
sole) element in the humorous, it is 
evident that the writer who deliberately 
and with malice prepense sets out to be 
funny as before him two roads down 
which he may travel in his search 
for a subject. He may elbow his way 
along the broad avenue of the Com- 
monplace which he will find crowded 
with men and women whose everyday 
actions seem to afford little material for 
humorous or poetic treatment ; yet, if he 
be a real artist, his eye will often discern 
among these trivialities some little thing 
which, if treated seriously, may produce 
an effect at once humorous and moral. 
Such a method of treatment is difficult 
and is possible, as said before, only to a 
real artist. Such an artist is Boileau 
when writing Le Lutrin ; such is Pope 
in i\iQ^ Rape of the Lock,' such is Gilbert 
in Patieyice. 

If our searcher for humorous subject 

refer to climb up the steep incline of the 



iSi IMPRESSIONS O^ 

Elevated, lie will find tlie path lined witii 
many noble statues embodying some 
serious and affecting action. Any one of 
tbese statues he may trick out in the rags 
of the trivial and the ordinary : the effect 
is incongruous and sometimes (though by 
no means always) humorous. But the 
nobility of the statue is spoiled. Such a 
method of treatment is common and easy : 
by such a method have parodists ruined 
I<ongfellow's ''Excelsior": by such a 
method have the Messrs. Paulton, in their 
Niobe, dragged down the beautiful story 
of Pygmalion and Galatea. 

Yet it cannot be denied, as granted 
above, that the effect is often humorous 
on account of the sharp contrast between 
the methods of thought of artistic Greece 
as embodied in Niobe and of commercial 
New York as embodied in Peter Amos 
Dunn, President of the Universe Insur- 
ance Company. Admirably, too, was this 
contrast carried out by Miss Foster and 
by Mr. Stockwell ; the former thoroughly 
pagan, dignified and statuesque; the latter 
thoroughly modern, ill at ease and fussy. 

Outside of the two principal characters, 
Niobe is about as uninteresting a play as 
can well be imagined ; it contains neither 



BoUn MODERN PtAYg. i59 

plot, wit, humor nor characterization. It 
is to be supposed that the society depicted 
in the play is not that of ladies and gentle- 
men, but of what Walter Bagehot would 
call "tenth-rate people striving to be 
ninth-rate people " ; only on this suppo- 
sition can we justify Mr. Huntington's 
talking of "photos" when he means 
" photographs " and his persistent fond- 
ness for making plural nouns agree with 
singular verbs. On the same supposition 
we must explain MissKingsley's entirely 
original pronunciation of the word 
"phonograph." 

Considering the length of the play and 
the necessarily short time allowed for 
rehearsals, the production reflects credit 
upon that important and too little appre- 
ciated official, the stage manager (Mr. 
Charles Bryant). 

As one looks at the pantomime one 
feels, How clever, yet how little worth 
doing ! For the pantomime is interesting 
only as a tour-deforce ; as an exhibition 
of what human beings can accomplish in 
histrionics when they voluntarily deprive 
themselves of the chief means of accom- 
plishing it — the voice. It is as if a man 



166 iuPP.nQBioM Off* 

should tie his feet together and yet 
succeed in getting over a hundred yards 
in twenty-five seconds. That would be a 
remarkable thing to do, yet decidedly not 
worth doing, for the free and graceful 
motion of the unimpeded runner would 
be a far more interesting exhibition of 
physical activities at their highest. 

The pantomime, like music, suffers 
from vagueness and lack of definition. 
Ivike music, it suggests different things to 
different minds : it fails in unity of im- 
pression. As you look at In Old Japan 
you cannot possibly tell what the story is 
about unless you know the scenario. It 
might be about w^hat Mr. Vance Thomp- 
son tells you ; it might be about half a 
dozen other things ; and even when you 
know the story many of the actions on 
the stage leave you with a puzzled feeling 
as to what they mean. Both Mile. Pilar 
Morin and Mile. Severine are good 
actresses and in the climax of the second 
act show a real tragic power. This 
power they are wasting upon a kind of 
performance that might appeal to the 
human race in its infancy, but which can 
hardly expect to hold the attention of 
men and women to-day. 



SOMR MODERN PI.AYS. l6l 

The best thing about the performance 
was the accompanying music of M. Aime 
Lachaume — admirably descriptive so far 
as music can be. 



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